Abby Berates Celebrated Classics No. 3

So this is how it is. I have midterms and midterm papers and online midterm quizes (lecturers are getting more and more creative with these things) right now, in addition to working two jobs. In other words, I don't have a lot of spare time to read for fun. Right now I am trying to plough my way through The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy (boy that's a lot of c's for one name) which is at once exasperating and oddly enjoyable, you will know the how and why of it all when I finally finish it and write a review. My prognosis is that this will happen around the time the human race will be almost wiped out by the effects of global warming, so you can read it and go "Hmm" and continue basking in the purple sunlight. In the mean time, since I do have to read a lot for all those various midterm permutations I'm being bombarded with, there will be a lot more classic literature bashing in this blog, which I know will make a lot of people very happy. Ok, it'll make the three people that read this thing happy. Ok, alright already, it'll make me happy. Yippeeee!

After that intro, I regret to inform you that there will be no bashing today, since I'm going to discuss Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterburry Tales, a major staple of the English literature canon, as ALL the freshman year English Lit students in the WORLD know, which I actually happen to enjoy! I can start by saying that the way this man managed to criticize every source of authority around him, be it the church, the court, the aristocracy or even storytellers like himself and still slip it by all of them is absolutely masterful. The critiques are so subtle yet so undeniably there! They are present in the fact that the most religious figures on the pilgrimage to Canterbury tell the most bawdy and raunchy tales, that the noble knights are rapists and tell pagan stories and that the infamous, slutty wife of Bath is perhaps the most psychologically complex character here. There are A LOT of tales in The Canterbury Tales as the title may suggest, and I'm not going to pretend to have read all of them. To those of you unfamiliar with the homogenous world of English Lit faculties, everyone reads the knight's tale, the miller's tale, the wife of Bath's tale, and sometimes the man of law's tale or the nun's priest tale. Those are the standards, expecially the first three. They all deal with people from different professions, different sphere's of life, different classes, different genders even! And the best part about Chaucer is that no one can enjoy complete respectfullness and seriousness, everyone gets poked fun at, at least a little bit. Stories get interrupted at their climaxes, narrators get pushed in and out of the complex narratory framework and the strict and structured world of the medievals is turned into a chaos in which all are equal. It's a pain to read in Middle English, with its old timey words and cooky spelling, but after having this text basically shoved down my throat for 3 years, and after much initial resistance, I can finally say that it's most definitely worth racking your brains over.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

Oh happy day! Oh happy joyous day! Oh wonderful, beautiful, marvelous day when Nick Hornby releases a novel that doesn't suck. Anyone who's read High Fidelity and subsequently any of Hornby's other novels will know exactly what I'm on about. High Fidelity was a revelation, a celebration, an infatuation and so many other things to anyone who first laid his/her eyes on it. Just like the subject of the book, this was love. And just like the book prophesied this love was in for a disappointment. About a Boy left an aftertaste of lacking but was sufficiently entertaining to preserve the flicker of hope for Nick Hornby's return to form. Unfortunately for all, his next novel How to Be Good ruthlessly stomped that flicker of hope out. And with that disaster of an ironically titled book, all eyes turned away from Hornby to seek new loves to heal the wound of High Fidelity. For me and many others, Hornby was finished, he was through, a fleeting fling that only led to heartbreak. But now A Long Way Down makes me reconsider my affections. It's not High Fidelity but it's up there. Hornby has a penchant for naming his novels in a most ironic manner with regards to his own career, and yes, as banal as it is to say, A Long Way Down marks a long way up on Hornby's literary trajectory.
Hornby's talent lies in his ability to create characters that feel as familiar and real as your friends and family. Here this talent is on full display with four narrator-characters taking turns in furthering the plot line along. These characters are not new. JJ, the American, is Rob from High Fidelity; Martin, the talk show host, is Will from About a Boy; Maureen is a strange combination of Katie from How to Be Good and Fiona from About a Boy; Jess...well Jess is new. Jess is pretty much new to literature, not just Hornby's repertoire. A psychotic 18 year old girl with absolutely no social skills or anything approaching manners. And she gets to narrate too! The context or these characters being brought together is their desire to commit suicide on New Year's eve. Sounds "emo" doesn't it? But Hornby's realistic, no fuss approach makes you look at suicide from a whole bunch of new angles, making you reconsider why anyone would commit suicide and why someone would change their mind. Just like in any other Hornby novel, you should not look for any bombastic resolutions or clear cut conclusions to take with you. What make him special is that his novels always describe a process. A process that doesn't start with the first words of the book and doesn't end with the last, but the glimpse that you are bestowed with is at once depressing and uplifting and all together profound.

Abby berates celebrated classics No. 2

And now, all you readers holding your breath since the last ABCC post, prepare for sweet release. Yes, the time has come my friends to discuss Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Since my last mention of the play I have been exposed to two productions of the play, a re-reading of it, and many a critical article. Thus a better informed me can now still make the claim that it sucks, but with moderation. Die hard fans have bombarded me with questions about what can I possibly have against this wonderful celebration of young love and saturnalia. I shall now make public my entire list of complaints. First of all we should take a close look at the two pairs of lovers which seem to be the central focus of the play. For once, they are quite indistinguishable from each other, with the exception of Helena who also ultimately succumbs to her fate of banality. Lysander and Demetrius might as well be the same person, and Hermia could very well be replaced by a blow up doll (now that would be an interesting production). Second we go to Egeus, the supposed obstacle to the lovers' cause, who has virtually no other quality but being said obstacle. Theseus makes a few notable speeches, but his counterpart Hypolita, the so-called amazon queen is completely stripped of all her potential as a character. Another mark that this is but an early play of Shakespeare and that his craft was not as yet fully developed. The fairy world generously gives directors a chance to go wild with the make up and the shiny things, but extra-textual elements aside, there's not much to them, with the dubious exception of Puck. The one plot that truly raises my interest is that of Bottom the weaver and the rest of the mechanics. Here we can see a deep subversive discussion of class issues that are cleverly disguised in foolery. Bottom's dream manages to strike an emotional depth left unexplored by the fickle lovers, the fairies or the Athenians, and the mechanics' play-within-a-play which closes the final act makes one giggle with delight. Shakespeare went on to do better and greater things after this play which in my opinion is but a pale shadow of his talent, but in the character of Bottom you can see a glimpse of what's to come.

Just to leave you in suspense for next time, I'll be having a go at Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which I actually quite like, so please collectively untangle your bunched up panties.