Tag Archives: 10-10-12

August 5, 2011 · 11:34 am

A Farewell to Arms: Will she die?

                               Being a literary scholar (of sorts), I suppose should have known more about A Farewell to Arms. I feel like the books that float about in the cultural ether as “great books” ought to be known for more than their greatness, and perhaps for their content. In any case, I expected a book about dirty trench warfare, and instead got something like a romance.

Only something like, because rather than Catherine as a woman (I mean, putting aside her very visceral body in the book) I’d rather think of her as a metaphor for the end of a rationale age, the beauty of an era where people cared for one another (and apparently only one another)? Why do I prefer it that way? Well, I don’t like romances.

(side note: turns out I was meant to read “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and not “A Farewell to Arms.” Those assiduously following my 10-10-12 list will, no doubt, note yet another alteration to the list…)

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July 28, 2011 · 5:24 pm

Library: An Unquiet History

     Matthew Battle’s book about libraries took me ages to read because for the first time in months I had to read a book and somehow the requirement made the reading feel like a burden. It ought not to have, Library considers topics I find fascinating: the institutionalization of knowledge; the determination of how best to represent, preserve and promote culture/cultural artifacts; the violence inherent in the control of information; the political power attained and wielded through public institutions (of knowledge).

Granted Battle’s focus on particular figures in the history of the library from Alexander the Great through Melville Dewey casts an unnecessary focus on biographies of great men and distracts from the much more interesting questions about social and political use of spaces/places designed and used for the (at different times and to varying degrees) organization, preservation and dissemination of information. I found myself losing interest in the long sections on the influential role of x or y figure and rallying my focus for the conclusion to these lengthy biographies when Battles returned to analysis, critique and commentary on the various movements in history of the library, rather than in descriptions of them.

I know a little more about the ways libraries have been used – both literally and ideologically – but the more important outcome of reading the book might be that I am much more cognizant of the kinds of questions we might ask of public institutions, in particular those institutions purported to allow access to information and resources.

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July 25, 2011 · 12:09 pm

Lemony Snicket: Teaching Tone and Plot

    If I were teaching a course with the objective of students describing “tone” and “plot structure,” I might assign Lemony Snicket. The book adheres to a simple – here simple means predictable, but enjoyable – plot structure and adopts an informal, didactic and occasionally sarcastic tone. Characters are not developed, rather they are assigned single character traits from which they operate.

Despite what sounds like complaints, I enjoyed Lemony Snicket. I found the predictability of the plot, the evenness of the tone, and the simplicity of the characters to be… soothing. There is something reassuring about reading a book that sets out with the explicit warning that it will be a “disturbing tale,” all the while knowing – because the plot structure tells you so – that things will (in the end) work out okay. Similarly there is something enjoyable about forming a “contract” (see D.Coleman) between the reader and the text that says “this is the kind of book you will be reading,” and to have that delivered.

This book is not a triumph of character, plot, or theme. It is instead enjoyable for its tone and for its measured assurance that it is exactly what it claims to be.

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July 24, 2011 · 3:34 pm

American Psycho: Impressive Point of View

      American Psycho may be a lot of things – a remarkable exploration of the gap between self-perception and external recognition, a metaphor for the grotesque imbalance between rich and poor and the exploitative conditions that support such an imbalance, an exercise in reader self-reflection – but it is not a book that ought to be banned (have yet to encounter a book, really, in the banned books category that makes me seriously reconsider my stance on no-banning-of-books). Above all it is a book that thoughtfully explores the possibilities presented by narrative point of view.

With the notable exception of a half dozen pages in a climactic scene the novel is narrated in the first person point of view of Patrick Bateman a wall street worker (of some kind) and psychopathic killer (maybe). Whether or not Patrick actually kills anyone is a question I don’t have an easy answer for, though the novel certainly details the rape, torture and murder of many, many men, women and (one) child. How can it be that the novel could narrate these events but I still be unsure whether they actually took place? Such is the marvel of the untrustworthy and “mad” narration. Patrick interweaves his descriptions of torture with his obsessive (really obsessive) descriptions of what people wear, where he has eaten, when Les Miserable will be playing and how long he has worked out for. The imbalance among what Patrick thinks about, how he describes himself behaving, and how others react to his behaviour alert the reader to a consequential disconnect between the ways Patrick describes himself and “reality” as it is experienced by those around him. That this gap describes how every individual reader operates in the world should go without saying, but the novel does a spectacular job of highlighting in the extreme how detrimental and alienating this fissure must be. That we ought to spend more time listening to one another and more time trying to explain how we understand the world isn’t the solution offered by Ellis; rather, I think the book gets at the tragedy – the real horror – that we must all experience the world alone, from our particular (insane) point of view.

That the book includes scenes of extreme violence is interesting because these chapters precede exceptionally dull chapters recounting Patrick’s review of the body of work of artists like Whitney Housten. The result? This reader *skipped* the dull chapters on album reviews in order to return to the (truly) captivating narration of Patrick’s life. What does this desire to return to the horrific over the banal say about this reader? Well, it really is a most impressive point of view.

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