The Tent by Margaret Atwood

Atwood's name is a fixture on standardized exams and her poetry is prevalent in schools, so when I saw a new book of hers at the library, I thought it would be worth my while to check it out. The chapters of The Tent were short and rife with symbolism. I was relieved to discover each section was an autonomous essay. I thought Atwood may have deliberately designed them to form a coherent whole, and if that were so I am not astute enough to rise to the daunting task of finding the connections.

It was all deep, mutlilayered symbolism, the sort that is so ambiguous, it can be taken and interpreted in many different ways. I have been wondering lately about the nature of profundity. If a piece of literature causes me to think on some esoteric subject, though the author did not outright state such a concept, nor perhaps originally meant anything of the sort, is the author considered to have written something with penetrating insight?

Think on that. In the meantime, my review. I caught some allusions in the book, but I am sure not all of them. Atwood's illustrations were cute, especially the one that played on that art nouveau composition involving Salome.

Some of the essays were fairly graphic. I was disappointed. I think my favorite of all of them was the eponymous "The Tent," in which Atwood reckoned her literary endeavours as a frantic scibbling upon a paper shelter- the only barrier between her and a scary, dark world. It was interesting, if nothing else.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse was a fascinating, but meandering and melancholy, exercise in stream-of-consciousness prose. The first section of the book introduces the characters, whose lives are intertwined and connected commonly by matriarch Mrs. Ramsay. The inner thoughts of the various characters are revealed intermittently as they all vacation in the Hebrides. There is little outer dialogue, and no indication of a switch in narrator.

An abrupt chapter following this heralds the passage of ten years. Many, including Mrs. Ramsay, have died. The concluding chapter returns to some of those present in the beginning, and accompanies them as thry revisit the vacation home.

The relationships between all these people are hashed and rehashed. Mr. Ramsay is a distant philosopher-type whose children harbor resentments against him because of his emotional coldness. Lily Briscoe is a single painting dilettante for whom Mrs. Ramsay tries unfruitfully to find a partner. Mrs. Ramsay is reputedly beautiful, and she attempts to smooth out the lives of everyone around her. She becomes some sort of symbol of perfection for Lily, and inspires her to paint despite the fact that her work will just rot in an attic some day.

I did not particularly care for any of the characters. I find most complex character studies tedious and pointless. I am not sure I have a complete grasp on what Woolf was trying to say with this, either. I know she had a philosophy describing humans' inability to ever truly know one another, and I can see that here. Her characters would be complete mysteries to the outside observer, but the inner dialogue reveals so much more. I also caught the do-what-you-want-and-forget-posterity thing at the end, which is always a healthy perspective. But I feel like I may be missing something. I feel that way about literature often.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The African-American's experience is so remote from my own. It is not an experience I envy, either: having to overcome racial prejudice, impoverishment, stereotypes, and ignorance. I also find it fairly counteractive to establishing equality when a category is created based on what the author looked like. Geographical or chronological bounds are easier to defend.

I was able to muster up sufficient admiration for this book, though. As my English teacher Mr. Rossi said, the search for individuality is a universal one. The protagonist was more or less understandable and likable. He gets kicked out of college over an indiscretion involving race, and he must fend for himself in post-Renaissance Harlem. He joins up with "the Brotherhood" and tries to help in the fight for equality, but everything turns sour. He finally discovers that the only way he can find his individual identity is through himself.

I thought it was a fine message. I was glad the protagonist did not find his identity in an organization, but rather in a disillusioned solitude. I could sympathize with his attempt to rid his culture of ignorance. I had to write an essay on a famous African-American, so I chose Frederick Douglass, and I enjoyed the correlation in the book between him and the protagonist.

The Zoo Story by Edward Albee

This is a testament to my English teacher, in that I would never have appreciated this play to the extent that I do if I had not experienced it with him. The Zoo Story is a fairly short play, happening in one act, on one day, near one park bench. It is, in fact, a single conversation between two people. Peter is relaxing on the park bench one afternoon, reading a book, when Jerry comes up and begins talking to him. His comments are bizarre from the beginning. "I went to the zoo today," he starts.

All that follows is basically an unfolding of Jerry's life and how it contrasts with Peter's- one is married, with children, an apartment, and a decent job; the other lives alone, devoid of human connection, finding the neighbor's dog a sorry excuse for a companion.

The story turns abruptly when Jerry tries to start a fight with Peter. It ends with Peter, in self-defense, grabbing the knife Jerry wields, and then Peter standing bewildered as Jerry impales himself upon it, with a thank-you for the assistance.

Jerry is one of those who get lost in society, whose troubled childhood leaves them ill-prepared to deal with the world. Peter is the moderately successful well-adjusted citizen who never truly finds himself uncomfortable. Jerry changes that. He puts Peter in a position of severe discomfort, forcing him to see where Jerry was coming from when he babbled on and on for pages and pages. It was a well-done play, and my teacher's rendition of Jerry was fantastic. I was fascinated by the story for its entire duration.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Well, I am very proud of myself. I managed to make the canon of Austen literature last for over a year. But tragically, I have finished the last one. I guess I'll have to start all over again.

Persuasion was superb, both in its predictability, and in its innovation. The female lead loves the male lead, and there is lots of uncertainty until they get together in the end. That is a given. But this heroine is older. She spurned the advances of a young sailor in her youth at the advice of a friend, and now she is "seven-and-twenty" and still single.

The sailor, now Captain Wentworth, shows up again because of common acquaintances, but he has eyes only for younger, livelier girls, not "bloom"-less Anne Elliot. Anne just hangs out doing the whole Austen forbearance thing, and simply by being her normal, tactful, modest self, persuades the sailor to renew his love.

The eponymous concept is also manifest in Anne's decision to initially refuse the offer of marriage. Her friend had persuaded her to change her mind, and this is a major objection for Captain Wentworth.He thinks such a changeable mind exhibits weakness. But, of course, he is soon persuaded otherwise.

It was a very pleasant book. The story gives hope to quiet, untoward, unexceptional-looking girls. Apparently their better qualities will nevertheless shine through eventually. After all, Anne had no less than three potential suitors and certain admirers, in just six months. And, moreover, while in her late twenties in Regency England.

Austen made some great observations in this book, and I copied down some of the best:

"Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance: but still, saved as we all are by some comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments..." (Chapter 5)

"Anne had not wanted this visit to Uppercross to learn that a removal from one set of people to another, though at a distance of only three miles, will often include a total change of conversation, opinion, and idea." (Chapter 6)

"She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped." (Chapter 17)

Lord Hornblower by C.S. Forester

The war is over! Oh wait, no it isn't. Napoleon somehow escaped from Elba. Oops. Horatio is in France visiting the Count and his daughter-in-law Marie, who sheltered him in Captain Horatio Hornblower, when he is suddenly changed from celebrated, decorated war hero, to fugitive. Horatio organizes a guerilla warfare band, but they are too few, and after a few weeks of running, are disbanded.

Reduced to Horatio, his steward Brown, the Count, and Marie, the group is soon overtaken by Hussars. There is an excellent scence in which Horatio thinks the thoughts of a man destined to die, and then fights like one. It was better than a movie.

Marie dies, which was sad, but really a very convenient way to solve Horatio's lover conundrum. It was a spectacular way to get rid of her, I must say. The morning the Count and Horatio are condemned to die, the hand of fate is stilled. Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and Horatio is, once again, free.

Bush died in the beginning, but I never especially liked him, so I have nothing against Forester for doing away with him. Barbara becomes rather self-centered, abandoning Horatio to host foreign diplomats in Austria. She almost asked for the whole Marie-the-mistress thing. Not that that excuses Horatio's infidelity, of course. Bad Horatio.

Incidentally, the opening paragraph of the book involves Horatio admiring the ceiling of Westminster Abbey as he sat listening to a sermon. It was only the day before I read this that I was showing my sister a picture of that very ceiling in my art history book because it was not only beautiful, but strikingly Tolkienesque. Great minds truly do think alike.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was the master of the epigram, the maxim, the aphorism. His characters sometimes held conversations consisting entirely of them. His text is riddled with them, and it is by Lord Henry's that Dorian Gray lives and dies. Dorian is a young, beautiful man whom a painter immortalizes on canvas. When Lord Henry sees it, he comments that the picture will stay the same, though Dorian will age. Dorian is appalled at the idea. He rashly wishes it would be the other way around.

Fast forward some years, and Dorian's wish has come true. Though he adopts Lord Henry's "new hedonism" and spends his time chasing pleasure at the expense of his reputation and numerous people's lives, his countenance is as pure and innocent as ever. However, the painting has become grotesque. Dorian keeps it hidden, even as he tries to conceal his own inner depravity. Eventually, he attempts to destroy the painting, and by doing so, inadvertently kills himself.

Altogether, the book was a disparagement of a life of doing things solely for the pleasure of oneself. Dorian does whatever he wants, and he ends up unhappy and dead. He examines his own motives and discovers that even his attempts to do good are selfish. Of course, Wilde presents no alternatives here, but I hardly expected him to. Just having debauchery and dissipation decried is enough for me. That is not a theme I've often encountered in literature.

The prose was quick-paced, and, as I said, epigrammatic. A lot of people died, which was slightly creepy, but it was a very engaging story. Still, I can always find common ground with the reviewer quoted in the preface: "Why go grubbing in muckheaps?"

The Know-it-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs

The title appealed to me. I couldn't help myself; I had to read this book. I did not raise my hopes too highly, because it was written in 2004, and so it does not qualify for the "time will separate the wheat from the chaff" philosophy that I adhere to. So, my experience with the book was not too painful.

The story is a sort of memoir based on the author's actual foray though the entire Encyclopedia Britannica- all 33,000 pages of it. The plot involves the year it took him to get through it, as he simultaneouly joins Mensa, tries out for "Jeopardy!", and actually appears on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"

Jacobs includes all sorts of personal information, such as how he feels about his brother-in-law, that lends the story its authenticity, but also makes me wonder how the people featured reacted when they saw themselves on the printed page. Does that lady at the Mensa meeting really want to be portrayed as a loser with no job? Does Jacobs' father want his real-life relationship with his son dissected and displayed before millions of strangers?

I suppose the basis of good writing does lie in its resemblance to reality. Still, I don't think Jacobs even changed any names. But maybe he likes having his whole life broadcast to the world. It is very much like blogging, actually. Slightly narcissistic but sometimes entertaining.

The writing itself was very average, and too much like a journal. The story dragged sometimes, and Jacobs used way too much of the present tense. I hate the present tense. It unfailingly sounds like first-grades narratives do- simple and childish. It is fine for the six-year-olds, but unacceptable for an adult novelist.

In the area of worldviews, the author is an agnostic, but he acknowledges that there seems to be some moral absolutes, and he admires the book of Ecclesiates for its philosophical merit. Go figure.

The Family Reunion by T.S. Eliot

After a rather extensive research report on his life and works, T.S. Eliot is now officially one of my friends. I mean, his moral and spiritual development coincided so perfectly with my 1920s-centered topic requirement ("From The Waste Land to Ash Wednesday: A Moral Regeneration from 1922 to 1930"). How could I not love him?

The Family Reunion was a play in which a cast of characters related to one another realize that most of their problems stem from the matriarch's desperate and ineffectual, though sincere, attempts to make them happy during childhood. At least, that is how I interpreted it.

Eliot is a truly fantastic writer, no matter what he is writing about. His is the most poetic prose I think I have ever read. I would like to see a play of his performed, to see how the lines are translated upon the stage. Even when his meaning is not clear, Eliot's words are still mesmerizing. In fact, the hypnotic effect is probably heightened by the obscurity. But a play always reads flatly without the human voice to illuminate it. In that way, plays are much like poetry- best when read aloud.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Meursault, a Frenchman, gets caught in a murder mess in The Stranger. He shot a man out of self-defense, but during his trial he is judged cold-blooded because of his apparently callous reaction to his mother's death, and so is considered capable of premeditated murder. He is condemned to the death penalty.

A striking aspect of the narrative is how logical Meursault's reaction to his mother's death seems at the beginning. For when it is examined in a courtroom, it really does appear condemning. Meursault was fascinating- a resigned, indifferent individual, concerned mostly with sensual pleasure when concerned with anything at all.

He was one of those who just go through the motions of life, not caring about the past, not anticipating the future. He was quite a peculiar sort of atheist, countering the chaplain calmly, asking what God had to do with anything, quite unperturbed. He really had no concept of God at all. I was as unsure of how to react to such measured indifference as the chaplain was.

Altogether, the story was that of a man's response to his imminent death; or, at least, it culminated in that. Meursault just reasons he was going to die eventually, and if it happened thirty years before he had expected it to, what then? What difference did it make?

And yet, one would think it made all the difference in the world. For how could Meursault know he had got the meaning of life, or the lack thereof, right? Isn't it presumptuous to assume one has absolute knowledge when one has experienced such a neglible fraction of all there is in the universe? Maybe another thirty years would have revealed a more concrete conclusion than that all that there is, is nothing.

The Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot

Poetry has always been a thing despised by me. But, once again, my AP Lit and Comp teacher's instruction has proved horizon-expanding. We went through "The Hollow Men" when we read Heart of Darkness, and I was intrigued by the depth of meaning manifest within the poem. In my other English class, a brush with The Great Gatsby warranted a five-page essay on a topic from the 1920s. Seeing how as I find most of that decade as vapidly decadent and unworthy of study as F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel itself, I decided to take a risk and immerse myself in a subject completely unknown to myself- T.S. Eliot and his poetry.

The research and composition of my paper was an unprecedented success (my five-minute class presentation was not as wonderful, but that is another story). Though much of Eliot's message was obscured to me on my primary readings, subsequent commentaries, rehashing, and invaluable audio files of the author reading "The Waste Land" undoubtedly as it was meant to be heard, gradually filled in the subtler shades of meaning for me. I was able to trace Eliot's journey from a disillusioned, dispassionate commentator on the dissipation and dismemberment of modern society, to an enlightened, rejuvenated Christian, full of calm hope.

His "Choruses from the Rock" were gorgeous expressions of an intellectual Christianity. "Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word" takes one "nearer to death/but nearness to death no nearer to God." The first chorus contains those lines, and ends with these:

And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.
O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

I'll commence with a caveat: most of my perspective is probably my senior AP Lit and Comp teacher's, so buyer beware.

Twelfth Night was fairly funny. It was largely far-fetched, and really only enjoyable when acted out, but the humor was still apparent in the text. Mr. Rossi's pantomines also helped.

The underlying message was an intriguing one. "Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Sir Toby asks Malvolio, the self-righteous Puritan. Can religion and pleasure exist together? Perhaps Shakespeare thought so.

I'm not typically a Bardolator, but I was able to muster up some appreciation for Shakespeare with a teacher to elucidate the finer points and bring to light the essential themes. Maybe, as T.S. Eliot said, Shakespeare is a better companion as one gets older. It might be that youth cannot tackle the Bard on its own.

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

I do not know what the general consensus is on this book. I personally am divided. I am not particularly fond of Russian literature. I got maybe three-quarters of the way through War and Peace before the people at the Jeopardy! tryouts told me to just shelve it and watch the movie, and so I gleefully returned the book to the library. It was that novel that introduced me to the more benign 19th century definition of "make love," so I suppose it had some merit. It's just that I can't forget the picture of the pregnant lady with the "beautiful" downy upper lip.

Anyways, Fathers and Sons was modestly enjoyable. The young Arkady brings home his idol- his nihlist friend Bazarov to meet his family and visit for a few weeks. Incidentally, the footnotes said Turgenev coined the term "nihilist." Arkady eventually loses his illusions of his friend's depths of enlightenment and abandons such a sad, deficient philosophy. Bazarov dies of typhoid fever, still resigned to his beliefs.

Everyone in the book seemed to be controlled by their personalities. Bazarov was congenitally predisposed to universal condemnation, and so he espoused it. Arkady was a simpler, "romantic" type, so he could not adopt Bazarov's mindset. The "intelligent" girl was cloying and unattractive; the beautiful, stately woman could never quite grasp Bazarov's sayings.

One image that has stuck with me is that of Bazarov's final illness. While conducting an autopsy, he accidentally punctures his finger. He calmly waits as infection sets in, and as a doctor, he observes himself and can trace his subsequent demise. To a lesser extent, I can relate, for when I first sense a cold coming on, I can only sit in doleful resignation as the symptoms progress. It may not be life-threatening, but just as Bazarov with his typhus, there is absolutely nothing I can do to halt the virus. So I sympathize with him.

I am not sure what the final judgment on this one should be. The contrast of nihilism and romanticism was intriguing. From what I can tell, the former is shown to be impractical. If that is the author's intent, then I commend him.