The Canonization

My Antonia by Willa Cather

2007-07-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a paper on Cather's My Antonia as we speak. It's all about representations of reader response to literature in the novel and Cather's status in the American canon, your usual English lit baloney. But let's forget about all that for a second. This novel, canonical or not, moved me to tears with its transcendent beauty. Cather paints a shimmering prairie in colours blue and gold, making you wish there still was some magical frontier out there in the world where people could still start a new. This is a story of immigrants together building a new country out of bits of old blended in with the drive for a fresh beginning. For anyone like myself who has been through the immigrant experience the story still rings true through the fog of decades past and miles untraveled. Antonia is herself a representation of that old America, beautiful and strong, fruitful and fulfilling, before that immaculate vision began crumbling in chunks. Perhaps it never was true, perhaps it was always an aesthetic appeal to be seen as a glistenning Venus rising from the seafoam while the reality of America was dull with dirt all along. It doesn't really matter does it? The myth that My Antonia etches onto the canvas of global culture stands alone as a wonderful memory that may never had been, like a childhood dream that you remember as well as anything that actually happened.

Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

2007-07-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

I am a tad biased when it comes to Salman Rushdie. He just happens to be one of my favourite writers of all time. The way the man can carve up language to create a new hybrid that is not quite English and not quite anything else is ucanny. And the amazing thing is that it makes perfect sense, as if you were born with some sort of prenatal understanding of the Rushdian dialect. But that's about the auhor's style in general. This, his latest book is a bit of a conundrum. It almost feels like it was written by two diferent people. The novel is very much driven by characters that are complex and engaging, but at the same time almost allegorical. So when Max Ophuls, the famed ambassador conquers Boonyi Kaul, the Kashmiri dancer, it is at the same time the invasion of Kashmir by Indian and foreign forces. The problem for me lies mainly in the character of India, the daughter of the aforementioned couple. She is the focalizer of the first chapter of the book, and unlike all the other characters we encounter in the later chapters, she is simply not alive. But then again, she is American. Whereas the European and Indian heritages and cultures are fine tuned instruments in Rushdies hands as he creates his wonderful symphony, the American here seems to elude him. India (the girl, not the country) is not convincing and she lacks the magic that brings the other characters to life. One begins to wonder if perhaps Rushdie has finally lost it. The fact that the book opens on such a flat note may stop many readers from continuing onward, but please do. Once Rushdie's narrative moves to Kashmir, the novel finally finds its spark and keeps it kindled all the way through. The relationship between Boonyi Kaul and Shalimar the clown that is the driving force of this novel is simply unique and fascinating and it turns the devastation of the beautiful paradise that was Kashmir into a personal grief for any reader.

Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007)

2007-04-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

I won't go on about how much Kurt Vonnegut has meant to me, my parents, my friends, popular culture, anti war movements and anyone who actively tries to remain sane on a daily basis. I hope this review of the last book I read of his will demonstrate everything that was wonderful and uncanny about the man and his work. In a way it is commemorative. So it goes...

Slapstick is an extremely aptly named novel since here we see Vonnegut having the time of his life. What could be more fun than to get a pair of twins, brother and sister, monstrosities at birth, who speak to no one but each other till they are separated at age 18, place them in an insane intellectual and incestuous relationship with each other and let it simmer for about 300 pages? The story is narrated by the brother, Wilbur, King of Manhattan and the last President of the United States, which lies in shambles ever since gravity started going wonky. Vonnegut skips back and forth between Wilbur and Eliza's wonderfully tortured and idiosyncratic childhood and the apocalyptic landscape of Wilbur's present day reality. Only Vonnegut can make apocalypse seem like a pretty good option in light of the state of things as they are. The story is everything that a Vonnegut novel always is: hysterically funny, incredibly smart and heartbreakingly true. He attacks everything from family values to our ongoing lack of respect towards our environment, the book is an onslaught. But as with every Vonnegut novel the soul of the book lies not in the plot or in the moral but in the tiny little quips with which Vonnegut peppers his novels, the little phrases he keeps repeating until they have the collected impact of an atom bomb. "So it goes" said Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse 5 over and over again until your guts were on the verge of bursting, "Hi ho" says Wilbur King of Manhattan until the slapstick of our known universe is a ball of outrage at the back of your throat. Hi ho indeed. Rest in peace.

I Officially Suck

2007-02-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, as you may have already heard, I officially suck. But to redeem my suckiness I will now recommend some of the shorter things I've read this month.
First there's James Baldwin's short stories, "Sonny's Blues" in particular that is very warmly recommended. The stories are mainly about the blacks in America in the 30-40s I think. It's hard to tell from my picture, but I'm not black, and it's not the 30-40s (I think), and I'm not American, yet somehow Baldwin manages to place you accurately in the shoes of people who are distanced from you by so many factors. It's like you don't have to be black to feel soul music or jazz, which is actually what "Sonny's Blues" is about.
Next is Grace Paley who actually reminds you of the tradition Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foyer come from. That immigrant literature that seems to be peculiar to Jews but could belong to anybody who still has a concept of old world/new world. Literature with accents, stories with histories, it never seems to get tiring. That baggage that keeps piling up on each new generation, that each generation of writers volunteers its shoulders for. It's all there already with Paley who wrote from the 60s till this day (she's a really old and sweet looking lady now).
And there's also John Updike, who is probably the most successful and acknowledged out of all three. He's also the voice of the fat, lazy, glutinous middle class who don't take anything seriously, who go shopping just to shop and make money just to have it. Updike is bitter, realistic and caustic, trying to kick American's off their pleasure seeking asses. The stories are knockouts though the reality is much the same as it was 50 years ago.
So that's pretty much America in short stories, brought to you by the Ideology and the Subject in American Culture course at the Tel Aviv university. Those are the three writers that most impressed me out of the ones I wasn't already familiar with.
So, until the day I have time to read for pleasure only,
Toodles!

Appology....by me

2007-01-19T06:44:00.000-08:00

Argh! I want to read and review and bring the pleasure of reading reviews, but I'm too busy!!! Just want to let you know that this blog will not become an empty forgotten husk, a shipwreck in the depths of cyberspace. I'm still here, in spirit at least, and once I have time to actually read anything other than Malory (let's face it nobody wants to read Malory, nobody wants to hear about Mallory, the less Malory in your life the better) I will make my triumphant return. Please enjoy the chips and dip on your way out.

Abby Berates Celebrated Classics No. 3

2006-12-25T13:12:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-09T05:30:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

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.

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

2006-11-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

Choke is definitely not an easy pill to swallow. Just the fact that its title commands you to quit your obnoxious breathing, is indicative of its attitude towards the human race, and that includes you dear reader. Of course as always it is sugarcoated by Palahniuk’s engaging, almost trance-inducing writing. Here it is at its needle point sharp best. He certainly seems to revel in his own sentence structures, to a point where every line seems to be but a part of a sequence formulation. Obsessive isn’t the right word, but it’s the first one that comes to mind. Even the rollicking catch phrases however, fail to lighten the mood of dark perversion, inevitable betrayal and general dejection in this novel. Whereas in most of Chuck’s novels one can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel of wretched human existence that he is so fond of exploring due to their fill of wry humor, here you just know that the light is most likely to be a train. As you follow Victor Mancini on his downward spiral through sexual addiction, choking in restaurants, messianic delusions and huge mommy issues one begins to lose sight of the surface. The affirmation is delivered in unconvincing terms, the hole Mancini spends the novel’s length digging for himself seems just too deep to suddenly climb out of. In the end the novel ends up stuck somewhere in your esophagus and you don’t know whether to cry, chuckle or spit it out all together. It is a familiar feeling with Palahniuk’s novels, except this one is just so aptly named. Perhaps he will continue to release his bile filled vendettas until we really do choke, as I suspect was his intention all along.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

2006-11-07T06:57:00.000-08:00

One cannot expect too much excitement from a novel about college politics, middle aged marriages and white towns in New England. It’s just not there. The term middle of the road should have a picture of this book’s cover next to it in the dictionary. Not even Smith’s inventive, sometimes forcefully inventive writing, can save the subjects from their own banality. This is no White Teeth that carried its reader afloat upon its many entangled storylines to reach a final whirlpool where all the threads came together for the ultimate splash. To say that On Beauty is more subtle than this would be implying that that’s a good thing. Again Smith relies on the multiple storyline technique, giving each character his or her own voice as the narrators change from chapter to chapter. However the voices just don’t resound as much as they used to. Kiki Belsey, a character with a lot of investment from Smith, does not justify the effort. Jerome Belsey is a thin ghost of what was potentially a great opportunity for exploration – a born again Christian in an ultra liberal multi racial family. The two characters that truly inspire genuine fondness are Zora and Howard, even though they may be the least sympathetic. Howard is a self absorbed, white, English, art history professor, who truly does not consider anyone but himself in his pursuit of the aesthetic and his humanity shines through the dreariness of the text at the most unexpected moments. Zora too is an awkward goal oriented young girl, who will trample anyone on her way to whatever meaningless goal she set up for herself in order to avoid affection, which is oddly sweet. It’s quite easy to identify with the flawed in the novel, it’s the embodiments of human nobility that are a little hard to swallow. The plotlines too are a bit of a mess, none of the meticulous calculation that was so astounding in White Teeth. The so called Belsey – Kipps family feud, never comes to any fruition and never even has a profound effect on the main storylines. The book drags on till page 300 where it begins a head dashing race to the finish. Sure, those last pages are very exciting and have tons of really pornographic depictions of sex, but are they worth the uphill climb of the first 300? Umm…yes.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

2006-10-31T08:57:00.000-08:00

The History of The History of Love

In the beginning everyone started out with a perfect world. Each person’s world was as beautiful as them, the sky of their world reflected their eyes and their footsteps were already marked in the sand. But they were alone in their perfection and people started venturing out of their worlds into other worlds seeking companionship. At first these expeditions were awkward and short, people rarely liked each other’s worlds as much as their own. As time went on people stayed in each other’s worlds longer and on their way back they inadvertently dragged something back into their world. A clump of dirt would latch on to the sole of a shoe, a flower petal would journey between worlds on an unsuspecting shoulder, a smell would hide inside a woolen jacket. Pretty soon people’s worlds began to merge, the boundaries between worlds started disappearing and no one knew if they were in their own world or someone else’s anymore. After a while only small patches of perfection marked the territories people once knew as their own, and not long after that they forgot they were theirs to begin with all together. Inside this new conjoined world teeming with people there remained an island world of two people who needed no one else’s world but each other’s. His name was Jonathan Safran Foer, her name was Nicole Krauss. Through the leaves of the thick hedges that marked the boundaries of their perfection they watched the people in the big flawed world around them go about their lives. They thought they were beautiful. They thought they were sad. They wrote wonderful books about what they imagined their lives would be like. Books about love and loss, books about memories and words, books about keys and locks, books about children and fathers. In these books love justified loss, memories went beyond words, keys opened locks and children loved their fathers. When a book would be finished they would throw the book over the hedge and into the big world. The people read their books and wept because they still had a distant memory of the perfection they used to have. One of those books was The History of Love.

Abby Berates Celebrated Classics No. 1

2006-10-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

I’ve now started my last year studying English literature at Tel Aviv university. The coveted degree is so close and yet so far. Meanwhile as part of my studies I am required to read a whole bunch of classics, and what better way to relieve the strain and frustration of it all than by bitching about them to the devout followers of my illustrious blog (which by now I expect must count millions).

For the first installment of “Abby berates celebrated classics” I bring you William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. What can be said about good old Shakes that hasn’t been said before? Is it too bold to say that while his tragedies are all that and then some, and Hamlet is one of the most genius pieces of literature I’ve ever come across, I find a lot of his comedies ridiculous and not humorous at all? Of course I realize that the humor of yesteryear doesn’t translate well to a modern audience most of the time, but it’s not too much to ask that they occasionally raise a chuckle. Modern theatre renditions of Shakespeare really have to ham it up to make them funny, but on the page it’s basically just a whole bunch of punning on rude words. So when Petrucchio says “undertake” it’s a double entendre for the horizontal macarena. Hysterical. I don’t think it’s necessary to condescend to saying “well, those things were hilarious once”; Shakespeare knew that the audience to his comedies would be vulgar and crude and that this kind of hijinx would get it going, like Elizabethan American Pie if you will. And just like I will never in any way agree that that movie is at all watchable without embarrassment for everyone involved, I do not agree that just because it’s Shakespeare everyone should wet their panties and give a royal salute. He did have to sell tickets you know. The Taming of the Shrew in particular is quite offensive to read and maybe that’s why it’s actually one of the more enjoyable ones. It’s just outrageously chauvinistic and actively engages in the torturing of poor Katherina until, not only is she not a shrew, she barely passes for more than a living puppet. Really gets them feminist juices going. The play pretty much makes a mockery of love, marriage and everything in between, and it is pretty funny to see Petrucchio starve Katherina almost to death, since she really is quite bitchy. Though I sincerely doubt that Shakespeare meant that part to be the funny one. But join me for the next edition of this newly added segment when I will discuss one my most hated plays ever, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is next on the reading list for that particular course. T’shall be full mirthful my good friends, as we shall ponder Shakespeare’s verse, if ‘tis a blessing or a curse.

Kornwolf by Tristan Egolf

2006-10-25T18:05:00.000-07:00

Kornwolf? You mean werewolf? Or is it The Blue Ball Devil? And where in hell (pun intended) is this surreal God forsaken landscape Egolf refers to as Pennsyltucky? Asking questions such as these only led me to wondering in circles trying to locate a straight line of reasoning anywhere within the pages of Tristan Egolf’s third, and sadly last, novel. Yes, it is a novel about small rural town life, journalism, boxing, the Amish community, the crazed depravity inherent in American Puritanism and of course, werewolves. A heady and potent concoction that is bound to result in some gut punching, head spinning, eye gouging and nostril blocking fun, as Egolf draws a picture so vivid it makes one wish they digested their lunch before assuming reading positions. After a bout of googling some of mentioned locations I can in fact confirm that there is an area in rural Pennsylvania referred to as Pennsyltucky by them smug city folk. To my enormous disappointment the map of Pennsyltucky does not contain little stars with names such as “Intercourse”, “Blue Ball”, “Bird-In-Hand” or “Philth Town”. However, Egolf’s portrayal of human baseness, mischief and carnal animalism is more present, immediate and physical than any map that denies knowledge of such. As fan of dischordia, reporter Owen Brynmor, sows seeds of panic and anxiety throughout the Basin with tales of “The Blue Ball Devil”, backed by a scanner photograph that not even he can explain, a hellish secret buried deep within the heart of the Amish community begins to rear its ugly, pungent, snarling head. Under the light of the blue moon all forces will come to a head and the Kornwolf will reveal its deadly fangs. Egolf’s writing is at once surprising and natural, drawing pictures with corn and excrement blended together masterfully. It’s rare to find writers today that still use language with visual imagination, that aren’t afraid to mix metaphors or invent a word. Egolf uses language like a playground, where one can always construct new creations out of the existing building blocks, and the result is extremely refreshing. The one thing that a reader may find fault with here, is that upon many occasions Egolf will engage in a story line that will not lead anywhere except to maybe drawing parallels with other more conductive storylines, which leads to queries such as “Well what about that Roddy guy?” But in the end it’s all part of the fun, and fun in literature is dangerously underrated. As for me, I’m with Tristan all the way. This book made me want to set haystacks on fire and spray paint dirty words on community centers. Screw continuity and flow, LONG LIVE DISCHORDIA!