2012 Book #8: We

When I talk to others about dystopian novels (which happens surprisingly often), most of them have read 1984, and lots have read Brave New World. Most know about Yvegny Zamyatin‘s We, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has actually read it. Some have even tried to read it, but everyone seems to think it’s boring. At some point when I was in high school, I bought a paperback copy of We from my local Borders. Fresh off of 1984, I was excited to delve more deeply into my newly discovered favorite genre. But I didn’t get far intoWe. In fact, I think it put me to sleep within ten minutes. I have no idea why except that maybe I’d happened upon a bad translation.

Because We is good. I might even like it more than 1984, which is a very tall order.

It’s about a man named D-503 in a totalitarian society that you’d expect out of any dystopian novel. Society is regimented, everyone is constantly being watched. The key to happiness, they think, is the eradication of imagination, of the soul. Citizens live in apartment buildings made almost entirely out of glass. There is no privacy except for planned sex days, when they’re allowed to lower the blinds for half an hour and have sex with partners to whom they’re registered. Like Brave New World, any children must be carefully planned, and they’re immediately taken away from their parents to be indoctrinated by the state. D-503 is content here. He is the chief architect of theIntegral, a flying saucer of sorts meant to spread this society’s government throughout the universe since it has already dominated the Earth. Everything is great until I-330 (a woman – men’s names begin with consonants, and women’s names begin with vowels) enters the picture, gets D-503 all riled up, and gets him in touch (he, he) with his imagination. This novel is written like a journal, so the reader gets to experience his discoveries alongside him, making his experiences feel authentic and immediate. As he awakens, he begins to figure things out, and Things Happen. That’s as far as my summary goes.

If you like 1984, We is a must-read. It’s a huge influence on lots of my favorite dystopian novels. And what’s funny is that even though We was written in 1929, it doesn’t feel dated for the most part. There’s a scene in which lots of people go into space for a short time on the Integral, and it’s especially interesting to read about what people in Russia in the 1920s thought space travel might be like, how the mechanics might work.

Seriously. Check this one out even if you’ve thought for years that it would be boring. Because it’s not and because it’s totally worth your time.

Bonus: Speaking of dystopian media, have you seen the old silent movie Metropolis? Turns out you can watch the whole thing (in parts) on YouTube.

Yay, dystopia! Oh. Wait.

As you might know, I’m reading Yevgeny Zamyatin‘s dystopian novel, We. And I’m totally not going to finish it for a couple of weeks because I have Other Things going on. So I thought I’d give you a quick rundown on what is possibly my very favorite literary genre. (Read on if you’re wondering what a dystopian novel is. I’ll get to it eventually.)

What happened: In high school, I was assigned quite possibly the best known dystopian novel of all time. Ever. Yep, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It remains one of my favorite novels, though I haven’t read it in several years (*adding it to my to-read list now). Written in 1948, takes place in 1984, this novel is a terrifying vision of what the world can be if the government becomes too powerful. You’ve heard of Big Brother. Here’s where he came from.

Second, for me, was Brave New World. It’s about a society in which people are conditioned from birth to think and behave in a certain way. The theory is that if every thought is conditioned, poverty, hunger, and crime will be wiped out. One of their tactics is to limit reproduction and, when a child is born, take him away from his parents to be conditioned by the government. And so on. Good novel.

There was also The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Atwood is one of my very favorite authors. (She’s also active on Twitter!) The Handmaid’s Tale was the first book of hers that I read, and I was enthralled. Like Brave New World, this society is dealing with population problems, but on the other end of the spectrum: for some reason, most women have become infertile. Young women who can have children are forced to become handmaids – or, basically, concubines to rich men. Still one of my favorites. Lots of Atwood’s novels are dystopian. If you like The Handmaid’s Tale, check out Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, both of which I read and reviewed last year. Then read everything else she’s written.

Several years ago, I read Ayn Rand’s Anthem, which is about a society in which even thought is supposed to be collective, and “I,” “me,” and “myself” are Unspeakable Words. I dislike Ayn Rand, so I’m not saying anything else. But Anthem is a dystopian novel that I’ve read.

And don’t forget Fahrenheit 451! A very special book for librarians everywhere. (See? Isn’t this genre exciting?!?) It’s about a society in which books are banned. Owning a book is a crime, and the government conducts regular and very public book burnings. Here’s another one I need to read again. There’s also a good movie version from the 1970s.

Wikipedia’s list of dystopian novels also includes Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which I’ve read and enjoyed, but I don’t think it fits into this category. Dude wakes up turned into a cockroach. His life becomes unpleasant. Things Happen. Not dystopian.

This one’s a short story: “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, in which everyone is supposed to be so equal that “normal” people are required to be handicapped in some way. People with above average intelligence have to wear headphones that make a high-pitched noise ever so often, interrupting any intelligent thought. TV anchormen have to have speech impediments, and so on. If dystopian lit sounds interesting to you, but you don’t want to make the novel commitment, “Harrison Bergeron” might be a good place to start.

And there are so many more! Here are some more that I’ve read and that I recommend. A few are juvenile novels, and I’ll mark them with a J. That shouldn’t keep you from reading them, though. They’re all great books no matter your age.

• A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
• The Children of Men - P.D. James
• The Giver - Lois Lowry (J)
• The City of Ember, The People of Sparks, and The Prophet of Yonwood - Jeanne DuPrau (J)
• Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell, my 2010 Book of the Year
• The Hunger Games trilogy – Suzanne Collins (J)

Do you see a pattern here? A dystopian novel is usually set in the future (sometimes in the very near future) and in a society that has gone horribly wrong. They usually involve totalitarian governments and/or a spent environment. Dystopia is the opposite of utopia, in which society functions perfectly, and everything is pleasant and beautiful and such. If you want to read about those, try Plato’s Republic or Thomas More’s Utopia. I generally find utopian novels a bit, well, boring, so I haven’t read any, I don’t think, except those two. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t!

Bonus: Here’s the iconic Apple Macintosh ad from 1984. It’s worth a watch!

2012 Book #7: The Optimist's Daughter

Eudora Welty has long been a staple of my Too Sentimental category. I don’t think I’ve read anything of hers since I was in high school, and I don’t even remember what it was. She reappeared on my radar after my fairly recent success with novelists like George Eliot and Willa Cather. I really read very little from female authors. It’s probably because a traditional English degree (or, at least, the one I got) glorifies dead white men. You know, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck,Lawrence, Joyce, etc, etc. And I’d especially avoided Welty because I remembered her as sickeningly sentimental.

And sentimental, she is. Except she’s not preachy like Paolo Coelho or Milan Kundera, two authors I despise. Reading The Optimist’s Daughter didn’t make me angry; in fact, I really enjoyed it.

The Optimist’s Daughter is about a woman named Laurel who is coping with the death of her father in a tiny Mississippi town. She has to deal with the memories of her mother, who died ten years ago, and of her husband, who died in a war. She also has to handle her father’s new wife, Fay, who has no emotional attachment to anything. Laurel has lived in Chicago for several years, and Fay has taken over her father’s house. She shows blatant disregard for everything in it and bitterness toward her husband’s previous wife.

This novel fits squarely into the family drama category, and it’s certainly worth your time to read. It’s a fairly quick read, and it held my attention all the way through. Welty’s characters are deep: you can’t help but sympathize with Laurel. I’m going to read more Welty in the near future. It’s a pity I’d avoided her for so long.

Bonus: Did you know that Eudora Welty was also a photographer? Check out her photos in this article from Smithsonian Magazine.

Check out The Optimist's Daughter!

2012 Book #6: Islands in the Stream

I’m not quite sure how I came across Islands in the Stream. I’d never heard of it. It’s one of Hemingway‘s later novels – after most of the famous ones – and it’s really, really good. I think I might have enjoyed reading this one more than any of the others I’ve read (For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises). That’s not to say that it’s the best I’ve read: I think For Whom the Bell Tolls takes that prize. The Sun Also Rises is also amazing. Islands in the Stream was just a good read. It’s as Hemingway-esque as you can get, in both content and style.

Islands in the Stream is about Thomas Hudson, a well-known artist. The novel is split into three parts, all in the Florida keys. In the first, he’s at a vacation house, and he spends his days painting and hanging out with his friends. His three sons spend the summer with him. There’s a great scene that’s very similar to The Old Man and the Sea, in which one of the sons tries to reel in an epic fish over about fifty pages. When the summer is over, the boys go back to their mothers. Then, something terrible happens. It made me cry. The second part takes place in Cuba. Another terrible something has just happened. Thomas Hudson splits his time between another house and the local bar. Hemingway also describes Thomas Hudson’s cats (modeled, I assume, on the troop of six-toed cats he loved so much) in great detail. The third part happens on a boat in the keys: Thomas Hudson is doing military work, looking for a boat-full of Germans and trying to take prisoners. It’s more about the relationship he has with his crew than what actually happens.

This novel is as beautifully written as any of the other Hemingway novels I’ve read, and I think it would be a good introduction to Hemingway because it includes some of the themes he uses often. Hemingway has written so many novels I had never heard of, and though I’ve always liked him (okay, I’m not particularly fond of The Old Man and the Sea), I’m especially looking forward to reading the huge amount of his stuff that I hadn’t read.

Check it out!

2012 Book #5: Silas Marner

So, after an attempt at some pop fiction, I’ve retreated the comfort of the classics. And comfortable it is.

Silas Marner is about a lonely weaver who moves to a small town after he was falsely accused of a crime in his hometown. His new neighbors are superstitious and wonder why he’d move there – and they treat him accordingly. He finds solace in the gold he saves from his weaving, hiding it under his floor and counting it every night. Until someone steals it. After that, he’s miserable; everyone thinks he’s crazy. Then, one night, a child appears at his hearth. He soon discovers that the child’s mother lies dead outside. Silas decides to keep the child and raise her as his own. Turns out that the child’s real father (spoiler!) is a rich man in the town, but said rich man doesn’t want anyone to know that he’d been married and had a child with a poor woman before he’d married someone closer to his social stature. And I guess I shouldn’t go too much farther with the plot, or you’ll be pissed at me if you read the book.

Because it’s good, and it’s worth reading. I really enjoyed Silas Marner, though it was a bit slow going. There were some spots that seemed to go on forever. I know why Eliot put those scenes in, but I wish she’d kept them a little shorter. This novel is also my first experience with George Eliot. When I was in college, I shunned anything related to the Victorian (which also explains why I did so badly on the Lit GRE back in the day). I didn’t even read A Tale of Two Cities or Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre until after I’d finished my English degree. Which is absolutely crazy. I’d always assumed I’d hate them. Okay, I didn’t especially like Wuthering Heights, but alas.

Anyway, Silas Marner is good, and you should give it a read if you haven’t already. It’s a pretty stereotypical Victorian novel – and a short one. I’m going to give George Eliot another try soon, though I’m a little concerned that if her longer novels are as slow in parts, I might not end up finishing them.

(Also, check out In the process of reading: Silas Marner.)

In the process of reading: Silas Marner

After a couple of bad experiences with pop fiction, I’ve wound my way back to where I’m comfortable: good ol’ fashioned schoolin’ books. Like Silas Marner, which I was never assigned in college (nor was I assigned any George Eliot, at all, but that’s another story for another day). The novel, though really good so far, is a slow read. I think it’s Eliot’s style, about which I’m not complaining. It’s just taking me longer than I thought it would.
So, in the meantime, I thought I’d read a bit about George Eliot because, well, I avoided Victorian-related classes in college because I was sure I would hate them. Which, I guess, is not the case.
Anyway, after reading the Wikipedia article (I know), I found a lovely essay Eliot wrote called “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” in which she complains about the female writers of her day. It’s actually pretty funny. She says that there’s a common misconception that poor ladies write novels to pay the bills, and that should make up for at least a bit of their general crappiness. That’s not the case, though: it’s usually rich, idle women doing the writing, and they’re “inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains." They suck at writing and at life: “[T]heir intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing both what they have seen and heard, and what they have not seen and heard, with equal unfaithfulness.” There are, of course, women who actually can write (“Happily, we are not dependent on argument to prove that Fiction is a department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully equal men.”), and of course Eliot counts herself in that number, though it appears that she fit into the idle class, too. No mention of that, of course. But I digress. She says that one of the most significant reasons for so much shitty output from female writers is that, unlike playing a piano, you can write badly and not know it because writing is so freeform:

No educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid requirements.  Like crystalline masses, it may take any form, and yet be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements—genuine observation, humor, and passion.  But it is precisely this absence of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of novel-writing to incompetent women.  Ladies are not wont to be very grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and incompetence inevitably breaks down.  Every art which had its absolute technique is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed imbecility.  But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery.

I need to read more about authors. I’ve never had an interest in history (again, I know), so I’ve shied away even from Wikipedia articles. When I was in college, getting me to read the biography blurb in a Norton Anthology before reading the actual piece was like pulling teeth. And the essays in the back? Yeah, right. Thus, I’ve read a lot, but I don’t know anything about who wrote anything. I have a feeling I’m missing out.

2012 Book #4: Ethan Frome

Yeah, yeah, I know I’m behind. It’s the middle of February, and I’ve only read a January’s worth of books. I’ve been busy!

Anyway, on to Ethan Frome, which I absolutely loved. As far as I know, this is the first of Edith Wharton I’ve read, English degree and all. And I’ve been missing out. It’s fantastic. This is the kind of book I’ve been needing to read – it’s like rehab for pop fiction.

Ethan Frome is about, well, Ethan Frome. He’s 28 and married to a horror of a woman named Zeena, who makes herself the center of attention by playing sick. For the past year, Zeena’s destitute cousin Mattie has been helping out around the house for room and board, though she’s not especially “handy.” Over the course of that year, she and Ethan have fallen in love, though they don’t act upon it until Zeena goes out of town for a day to see a new doctor. Ethan and Mattie spend the day together, and they kiss. Zeena doesn’t like Mattie, and she’s jealous of Mattie’s relationship with Ethan, so she devises a plan to get rid of her: she comes back from the doctor claiming that he said she must hire a maid and do absolutely no housework. She insists that Mattie leave the following day, and though Ethan tries to come up with something, he can’t really do anything about it. I guess I shouldn’t spoil the end of the novel, though I’ll give one clue: (again, spoiler! spoiler!) Rosebud. And I giggle.

It’s a depressing novel about forbidden love: Ethan is already in a miserable marriage, and, then, once he finds a wee spark of happiness, everything goes to hell in a hand-basket. Which really isn’t a spoiler because the very beginning of the novel explains how miserable Ethan is. Though it’s under 200 pages, Wharton thoroughly explores the characters and their motives, and that’s what makes it such a great read. It’s not an expansive world like those of most of my favorite novels, but a more personal and intimate one.

Wharton is on my shortlist. I’ll read another of her novels really soon because I enjoyed this one so much.

Bonus: If you like Ethan Frome and you’re a fan of 1950s pop fiction, find a copy of Mr. Whittle and the Morning Star. It’s a treat!