The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

So I was rummaging through our hall closet at home and I came across my dad's old literature anthology from college. This presented me with a fascinating moment for self-reflection. I have always taken an instinctively pragmatic approach to evaluating works of fiction- is the work instructive? redemptive? satisfying? and ultimately, is it entertaining?- rarely able to muster up sufficient appreciation for the darkly profound or avant-garde.

I believe this tack stems, at least in part, from a conviction I've intrinsically harbored that a work is not worth reading if I could not in good conscience recommend it to my dad, whose own tastes, indeed, I have often seen mirrored in mine. When I was in the sixth grade I discovered Jules Verne, and I gleefully passed on Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island to him after I devoured them. We marveled at Verne's clairvoyant depictions of scuba diving and delighted in the re-emergence of Captain Nemo together. Excellent books to be sure, but, as I learned later, essentially only science fiction, turn-of-the-century boys' adventure novels, and not necessarily the revered classics that for many years I'd held them to be, on par with Faulkner and Hemingway and Joyce, who figure heavily in the aforementioned textbook, and for whom I retain respective distastes.

But it was within this textbook that I found Tolstoy's delineation of death. Ivan Ilych contracts a fatal illness and declines rapidly. He is, until this point, a self-satisfied middle-aged judge well-situated in life with a wife and children. The realization that he is dying devastates him. The heretofore self-sufficient man cries out to God: "'Why hast Thou done all this?'" He recalls the major events of his life and marvels that it should end in such a manner. "'Maybe I did not life as I ought to have done,'" he muses. "'But how could that be, when I did everything properly?'" In the agony of his final days he is unable to continue to justify a life spent striving for power and reputation and position. "He tried to add, 'Forgive me'...knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand."

The story ends with an allusion to a verse of Scripture my dad is fond of quoting: "He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. 'Where is it? What death?'" mirroring, of course, Paul's defiant "Death, where is thy sting?" And so, amidst the scathing social commentary, the sardonic irony, and the esoteric symbolism of the untenably profound, I encountered a story of which I could say to my dad, "Here, read this. It's really good."

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy's work, while fixated on the countryside, is rarely pastoral and idyllic. Rather, his is a world of determined, pervasive melancholy. Still, he provides instances of redemption, and his dramas are never tedious. The Mayor of Casterbridge satisfied me, so when I saw The Return of the Native at a library book sale, I capitalized on the opportunity to repeat the feeling.

Hardy opens with the heath. "Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity." Egdon Heath proves to be almost a character here in Hardy's novel. The heath does as much to alter the fates of the principal players as they themselves do. Its atmosphere, to some familiar and comforting, to others stifling and oppressive, permeates every scene and action. The plot is one of diametrically opposed lovers whose rash and desperate attempts to orchestrate events to suit their own whims end in tragedy. The heath bears witness to their futile drama, reflecting upon its face a "black fraternization" with its ill-destined inhabitants.

The story is winding and captivating; suffice it to say several intertwined individuals of the mid-19th-century English countryside become yet more closely and convolutedly related when the eponymous native, Clym Yeobright, interrupts the natural course of things and drastically alters life in Egdon Heath. Clym falls in love with Eustacia Vye, an idle, beautiful woman secluded in her grandfather's home, desperate for the imagined pleasures of the city. "The subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine."

She bewitches Clym, and they are soon wed. But her capricious dissatisfaction and blind selfishness have tragic consequences, ending ultimately in death, for her and two others. She rekindles a relationship with Wildeve, who is lately married to Clym's dear cousin. While harboring him in her house she neglects to answer the door when Clym's heretofore estranged mother comes to reconcile. Distraught, and believing Clym condoned Eustacia's refusal to admit her into their home, his mother wanders on the heath in the rain, and after being bitten by a snake, dies. Eustacia later determines to flee abroad, aided by her lover, but in a wonted fit of passion drowns herself. Wildeve perishes in an attempt to save her, and Clym just escapes with his life.

Eustacia destroys all that she touches with her self-absorbed ambitions. "Yeobright," however, "loved his kind. He had a conviction that the want of most men was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather that affluence." Why this astute, intelligent man fresh off the streets of 1840s Paris should be so deceived as to make such an unworthy alliance is hard to determine.

Clym dreams of opening a school to educate the villagers of Egdon, much to the chagrin of Eustacia. When his eyesight is temporarily strained, restricting him to "furze-cutting" on the heath to earn money, Clym is not daunted. He throws himself wholeheartedly into the endeavor. "He is set upon by adversities," says Hardy, "but he sings a song." While he is merrily serenading the heath in the glow of his exertion, Eustacia happens upon him. Furious that he could enjoy engaging in the work of a commoner while she too is living like one, she unleashes her wrath upon him, the touching portrait of a man afflicted and nonetheless happily laboring in what capacity he can slashed to shreds by Eustacia's vindictive ranting.

Eustacia, retaliating against Clym as the source of her unhappiness, decimates his chances of achieving anything but, though Hardy does grant Clym an epilogic career as a travelling preacher/moralist. Is beauty truly such an inescapable snare, that a circumspect scholar would fall victim to a conniving, vindictive woman whose chief, and perhaps only virtue, is her face?

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

"I wanted him to give me wisdom," Augie says of a venerable businessman, and says, essentially, throughout his reminiscences. Augie March recalls his impoverished childhood in a Jewish neighborhood in the in the 1920s, continuing the narrative into his adolescence and through to his adulthood in post-WWII Europe. He describes his jobs, his friends, his romantic forays, and his travels- from Chicago, to Mexico, to New York, and finally abroad. His exploits are, as they have often been described, picaresque. Augie is not always above the law, but when he strays, we go right along with him.

Augie is continually caught up in the whirling eddies of strong personalities. One of his first jobs involves assisting a paralyzed business eccentric whom he reveres as a genuine genius, and later he steals textbooks with a Mexican math whiz on scholarship at the University of Chicago. Augie is perpetually seeking knowledge and, as he said above, wisdom. He begins to read the textbooks before delivering them, and he becomes enraptured with the ideas he finds. “I lay in my room and read, feeding on print and pages like a famished man.”

The book is dauntingly long, for Augie’s life is made of innumerable adventures, no detail of which he considers too small to include. Bellow composed complex sentences of description- clause piled on clause, with illustrative concrete nouns and reclassified verbs stacked precariously atop the subjects and predicates. Augie employs esoteric allusions abundantly, almost obnoxiously, as if Bellow wanted to underscore Augie’s self-education, evidence of his having read widely and deeply without perhaps a tempering authority to guide him in the proper deployment of such potent arsenal.

Augie uses very little foreshadowing, restraining himself to telling the story as it happens, avoiding bracing suspense in favor of a more natural revelation of events. Augie traces the development of his perception of himself as the events are unfolding, coming to a refreshing self-awareness towards the end. “I said when I started to make the record that I would be plain and heed the knocks as they came, and also that a man’s character is his fate. Well, then it is obvious that this fate, or what he settles for, is also his character.” Though his character-as-fate theory is nebulous and indefinite at best, the underlying current of personal responsibility that he espouses is a worthy conclusion.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Tolkien, Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, and now Evelyn Waugh- strangely enough, early 20th-century British Catholic converts all. What a peculiar convergence of literary figures. Someone should write a thesis paper on that. Waugh himself converted to Catholicism mid-career, with the latter half of his works becoming increasingly serious and religiously centered. Brideshead Revisited comes of this era.

It seems Waugh composed the book with a mind to present his new beliefs in a manner palatable to the generally secular reading public. His protagonist, Charles Ryder, falls in with pampered young Sebastian at Oxford, and becomes intertwined with his Catholic family. Years later, Charles chances upon Sebastian's sister Julia, and begins an affair with her that lasts until her father's death. But just when all hurdles have been cleared for them to marry, Julia breaks off their relations, unable to continue in sin.

Through this family Waugh exhibits varying stages of Catholicism, from the mother's lifelong devotion, to the father's insincere conversion, to the children's agnosticism. By the end, Charles, agnostic himself, sees every member return to a more or less genuine faith, each finding their own degrees of peace and happiness. Charles, however, is disillusioned and alone. While he and Julia had both effectually disowned their respective spouses when they took up with each other, Julia turns to missions after their affair ends, replacing that void in her life, but Charles is left unfulfilled.

Waugh's linguistic craftsmanship here is superb. Far surpassing Scoop in complexity and texture, his prose yet retains a lucidity and forceful elegance that can only be admired. His characters are arresting. The only disheartening element of the book is its overtones of homosexuality. Charles' relationship with Sebastian is mostly established to be platonic, but it is startlingly intimate, and there is enough ambiguity involved to make things uncomfortable. Less uncertain is the orientation of flamboyant world-traveler Anthony Blanche, Charles' classmate, whose purpose as a character is just as unclear as Waugh's attitude regarding such things. Waugh himself carried on untoward relationships during college, but this predates his conversion. He later married happily, so surely he viewed the effeminacy of Charles and Sebastian an unsavory but inevitable aspect of adolescence to be repented of later, and the unequivocal perversion of Anthony just another vice of an uninhibited man. That's how I'd have it, anyway.

Brideshead Revisited drew me in. The plot was essentially mundane, but the people continually interested me. I hadn't the slightest idea where Waugh was going until the end, and I was relieved to discover a conclusion compatible with my own convictions, for I was with him regardless.

Erewhon by Samuel Butler

I guess this is what I get for reading a book solely because someone, somewhere, made an oblique reference to it. I can't even recall where I heard of it. Somehow, nevertheless, I got the idea the book was worth my time, which prejudiced it in my favor. I dearly wanted to like it. But a sense of the foreboding fell over me when, in the preface to the revised edition, the author admitted, "I have found it an irksome task to take up work which I thought I had got rid of thirty years ago, and much of which I am ashamed of..."

Erewhon, in its entirety, feels derivative, in part because it is, but also because so many others have gleaned inspiration from it. In the best style of Gulliver's Travels, Butler strands his protagonist in a strange society through whose unconventional manners and mores we are ostensibly to see the foibles of our own. Drawing also on Thomas More's Utopia and predating Huxley and Orwell, Butler attempts what others have done, or will go on to do, much more successfully.

The beginning is bogged down in exposition and the adventures and aspirations of a poorly drawn protagonist. This man stumbles upon the Erewhonians and becomes their, albeit well-treated, captive. He details the oddities of Erewhon, from their aversion to machines and progress, to their severe punishment of physical ailment, to their nominal forms of religion. Butler employs thick, ambiguous metaphor and his voice is often indiscernible. At points it is hard to determine whether he is mocking society through his protagonist, or mocking the protagonist himself as society. I wouldn't doubt it to be both. Butler attacks from so many sides that he seems to prevail on none.

Altogether I think I missed the boat on the satire. In fact, I think that boat set sail when Butler died. Much of his wit now seems inapplicable, having faded along with the Victorian times it set to skewer. The book's inability to transcend time is, in all probability, its chiefest shortcoming.

Butler himself, from what I can gather, was a tortured, confused man swept up in the prevailing winds of turn-of-the-century intellectualism, unable to find a tenable basis in either religion or materialism, and so, being neither hot nor cold, as it were, was incapable of forming definite beliefs, resulting in a literary work as muddled as his mind.

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

I checked out this book solely because it was included in the College Board's list of 101 great books, at which list, for lack of a better, I have been chipping away dutifully for nigh on two years now. I thought, perhaps snobbishly, that this book would be merely a requisite representation of the Chinese woman that fulfilled some sort of multicultural quota, and maybe there are elements of that involved in the book's place in the College Board's heart, but Kingston's work is a decent piece of literature in its own right.

Kingston retells the tales her mother mesmerized her with in her childhood in sparse, bare English that evokes the fine, linear simplicity of the art of feudal China. She gives the eponymous woman warrior her own voice, allowing her to narrate the story of her training by a mystical old couple who give her the abilities to avenge the mistreatment of her people. Kingston slowly introduces facets of her own life and eventually moves entirely to talking of her family and their transition to life in America.

Kingston is at her finest when she is recreating the world of her ancestors. Her story-telling is just as riveting as her mother's must have been for her. The legends and fables, moreover, are fresh and unusual to unaccustomed Western ears. If the book were composed only of these, it would make for excellent bedtime reading.

When she draws parallels to her own life and compares her own experiences, there Kingston approaches profundity. I've come to wonder lately if that isn't what all literary fiction is- elegant attempts to make connections. Across ages, across cultures, across categories; within a book, within a concept, within a single sentence. For what is an allusion, but a connection between antiquity and modernity; a metaphor, but an abstract connection between two concrete entities?

The book's impact wanes when Kingston enters the narrow, crowded streets of San Francisco's Chinatown and her early years. She laments the disparagement of the female in her parents' culture, and she depicts the generational conflict between the elders born in China, and their offspring, who are beginning to assimilate into the new country in which they were born. It all lacks the poetic force the ancient stories contained.

But maybe that is where Kingston was going. Her contemporary life seems somehow insufficient when viewed through the lens of the past. The old meets the new, the East meets the West, and yet here we are, by time relentlessly pushed forward.

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

So I was listening to NPR (my philosophy is that if my media is biased in the opposite direction, when I hear something I like, I can trust it to be true) and I caught an interview with the author of this book. I couldn't resist; I find contemporary nutrition research absolutely arresting. Pollan, a journalist by trade, investigates the actual origins of the foods we eat, beyond the grocery store.

He begins in an ostensibly random place- a cornfield in Iowa. Much of the supermarket can be traced to this state, not only in overtly corn-based products, but also in anything containing citric acid, glucose, fructose, maltodextrin, sorbitol, xanthan gum, modified cornstarch, and MSG, among other things that habitual ingredient-list readers like myself would readily recognize. High fructose corn syrup, of course, is everywhere. Almost all animals raised for consumption are now corn-fed. Break down the molecular composition of the average American, and you will find corn.

That is just a small portion of what Pollan serves up. There is a lot to this book, but the essential message is that we as a nation are producing and consuming plants and animals in ways they were not designed to be used. According to Pollan, we could save untold amounts of money in all sorts of areas- from health care, to fossil fuel use, to fertilizers and pesticides, to government subsidies- if we would allow a system based on the natural growth cycles of our food.

Pollan's worldview is decidedly evolutionary, but even he admits the fallibility of science. "The problem is that once science has reduced a complex phenomenon to a couple of variables...the natural tendency is to overlook everything else, to assume that what you can measure is all there is, or at least all that really matters," he says in a statement that has implications outside the field of nutrition, and that speaks volumes about the shortcomings of materialism.

Moreover, Pollan profiles Joel Salatin, a "Christian libertarian environmentalist" who maintains an entirely self-sustaining farm on a few hundred acres in Virginia. Salatin's cows eat grass, their natural diet; his chickens eat the insects and larvae that come with cows and in doing so fertilize the pasture. His pigs turn the farm's waste into rich soil that feeds the garden. "'All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse,'" Salatin insists, likening his cause to the homeschool movement. Pollan is enthralled with the concept, and I'd have to agree.

Pollan's tone is sometimes overreaching but mostly elegant and accessible. He is methodical and scrupulously detailed. He is areligious, but he is compassionate to Christians and even presents one as his ideal food producer. It's a terribly informative book and I am quite glad I read it.

Act One by Moss Hart

Maybe it's the lofty editorial pretensions I harbor, but Moss Hart's autobiography, hailed by its back cover as "the dramatic story that captured a generation," seems not so much a refined, time-honored classic as much as the early draft of a rough, albeit worthy, manuscript. Hart's story in itself is captivating, and the immediacy and authenticity of his telling quality stuff, but a firm, guiding hand such as George Kaufman's could have made this book that much better. For Kaufman was the catalyst to Hart's career, and there is no little irony to be found in the fact that this excellent but improvable narrative climaxes with the drastic revision of the author's first literary success.

Hart begins this book in his childhood, tracing the thread of theatre that has wefted throughout his life. He travels through his impoverished adolescence and chronicles the development of his embryonic attempts at plays, climaxing with veteran playwright Kaufman's collaboration on his first quality play and concluding with its acclaimed debut on Broadway. It's a decent ghetto-to-glamour account, and Hart deftly fashions himself into a protagonist to be sympathized with and cheered on.

"It was astonishing to find how much of what we had written was unnecessary," Hart says of Kaufman's subsequent revisions to his play. If only Kaufman had applied his red pencil to this autobiography. Hart's prose is mired in unneeded words, rough cliches, stilted dialogue, repetition, inconsistencies, and contradiction. In one place he writes, "a historic," and later, "an historic." He asserts that he has "never really heard" the laughter of the audience for he is always "listening ahead for the next line," but then goes on to describe his elation at the sound of that very laughter.

Hart also spouts universal truisms left and right, as an old, rich, successful, self-satisfied man ruminating over his life can only be expected to, I suppose. "It is always a little dismaying to discover that the truth, as one explores it, consists largely of a collection of platitudes," he avers. Whether or not this "truth" is itself true I cannot say, but Hart certainly believes it.

So sometimes I had to restrain myself from marking up the library copy I read with notes in the margin. But like I said, it was a good story, and my interest rarely flagged. Moreover, I learned much about playwrighting and the creative process. The other morning I read an article in which a tv show producer commented,"If this were a play, we'd still be in previews," a reference which would have been entirely lost on me had I not read this book.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

So one day I was watching, of all things, a Catholic channel on TV, because some learned men were discussing G.K. Chesterton and his major works, and my curiosity was piqued. One man, a professor at a Catholic college, expressed his admiration for Orthodoxy and recommended it as an introduction to Chesterton's religious writing. So here I am.

Chesterton makes it clear his is not an argument of apologetics; rather, he is concerned solely with the moral and philosophical implications of belief in Christianity, for, he says, "having found the moral atmosphere of the Incarnation to be common sense, I then looked at the established intellectual arguments against the Incarnation and found them to be common nonsense." From what I can surmise, Chesterton's basic foundation for his beliefs stems from this: he has observed life is a certain way, and Christianity, of all possible belief systems, fits most perfectly this perception of his, so therefore Christianity is true.

It's a legitimate position, if not entirely fact-based. When Chesterton attempts to access factual information, he strays into archaism. Trying to establish a basis for supernatural occurences, he makes a case for contemporary appearances of ghosts, and he says "science will even admit the Ascension if you call it Levitation." Unfortunately, I don't think "science" will readily admit even levitation anymore.

Chesterton was a Catholic, and his writing retains elements of some of the extra-biblical features of such a faith, from constant reference to "the Church" as means of salvation, to saint-worship, to excessive reverence for priests and nuns, to all but condoning the atrocities of the Crusades. Nevertheless, he does accept Quakers, whose beliefs must have been vastly removed from his own, as true believers. He did not seem to consider salvation achievable through Catholicism only.

Chesterton emphasizes his conviction that of all worldviews, Christianity is the only one with any claim to humor and joy. I appreciated his reasoning. I've always entertained privately the belief that existence is inherently funny. Satan, Chesterton maintains, fell from taking himself too seriously, while "[t]here was some one thing too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."

The writing is quite pretty, undoubtedly, and the philosophical points no less so. Chesterton's poetic approach to finding the meaning of life is refreshingly novel. Some of his arguments are outdated, and parts of his book are trivial and extraneous, but the essentials remain pertinent, poignant positions on what it truly means to exist.

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

A superb narrative, absorbing powers of description, penetrating psychological analyses of a worthy protagonist, even some disparagement of the South- Styron did a good job, apparently good enough to win a Pulitzer. The story begins and ends with the day of Nat Turner's execution, and in between Turner tells of how he ended up in a jail cell awaiting death.

Though a slave in the 1800s, Nat is capable of lucid English that surpasses the quality of the white illiterates,' for he was taught to read and write and cipher while growing up in a relatively kind master's household. This lends the account a surprising, gratifying intelligence not common to fictionalized slave narratives.

Nat's education infused him with deep religious convictions, and into his adulthood his knowledge of the Bible guides and sustains him. He fashions himself into a sort of slave reverend, and his comprehensive study and interpretation of the Old Testament prophets convinces him he is called to lead a slave rebellion, a purging of the whites, in a manner similar to that of the biblical heroes' own revolts. The horrendous effects of living a life that legally belongs to another man drives this introspective intellectual to bloodshed.

Nat carefully dissects his emotions and motives- from discovering, as a little boy, that the words on canisters represented what was inside, to being unable, even in the heat of the moment, to murder his master- and effectively traces the development of his rebellion from its roots to his execution. Styron's meticulous, evocative use of description complements his comprehensive presentation of Nat's inner dialogue. His images are present and confident without becoming painfully obvious or self-conscious. Achieving this alone is worth a Pulitzer. The palpability of his narrative raises concerns only when Styron dips into the more ignoble aspects of Southern life in the 1800s. The graphic nature of some of the Southerners' exploits is not so pleasant to experience. But of course, as is so often the case, that is the point.

Nat Turner's merciless extermination of scores of whites is morally complex. Spartacus-like, he vanquished his oppressors in an almost certainly futile bid for freedom. But what else could he have done in a society in which he could never have gained such no matter what he did? The murders are undoubtedly repugnant, but slavery just as much. The South's continual oppression of an entire race of people and their descendants was the catalyst for the suffering and inequality from which we still feel the effects today.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

This second time around, I feel like I actually got the book. The first time I read it, I was rather sidetracked by the content issues, but was able to access some sympathy for Holden Caulfield and his disillusionment. I impulsively bought my sister a copy for her birthday, and later decided I should reread it to find out what exactly compelled me to do so.

I was surprised to discover what an excellent character Holden Caulfield truly is. An English teacher of mine, whom I didn't particularly like (I had, through serendipitous events, two English classes at the time, and while one teacher adorned every essay I wrote for him with glowing inked praise, this other one rarely gave me perfect rubric scores and, though constructive I'm sure she tried to be, criticized my writing quite often), once dismissed him as "annoying" and "whiny," but I found his dissatisfaction with life and the status quo entirely understandable. He is veritably drowning in "phonies," as he terms them, poseurs attempting a facade of normal, sane existence who in fact alternate between degeneracy, immorality, deceit, narcissism, and greed. Holden, while by no means without faults, refuses to be party to their pretences.

He is actually a terribly compassionate, thinking boy. Holden reads, engagingly and well. Moreover, he mulls over books at length afterwards. He also feels deeply the discomfort of others, whether it be some dowdy tourist women, his poor roommate, or two traveling nuns. The mundane tragedies of daily life are not lost on him. They move him in a manner his unfeeling compatriots cannot or care not to comprehend. It's no wonder then, that such a sensitive boy would retreat from the pretension, the peeling veneer of geniality, the utter "phoniness" of the miniature universe of prep school.

Holden's attitude towards religion and, in an interesting parallel, girls also, is troubling, complex, and yet, approaching healthy. Of ministers Holden is wary, for their obviously put-on preaching voices make him doubt their sincerity. He fancies himself an atheist, but harbors a regard for Jesus. If someone could just sit him down and explain it all to him...

As for girls, Holden is controlled almost entirely by his physical inclinations. Still, he desires not to take advantage of them, and realizes that his most meaningful relationship with a girl involved almost no physical contact at all. Holden is altogether in transition, navigating, almost directionless, the end of adolescence towards adulthood. His deep pity for mankind keeps him afloat. He's missing, of course, a satisfactory answer for existence, and this might be the root of his inability to cope with the world around him.

I guess this is what I wanted my sister to experience- Holden's frustrations and disillusionment, the common ground that scores of teenagers have identified with. After all, she's had her share of "phonies."

Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories by Thomas Mann

Mann's work was recommended to me enthusiastically, with a "just don't think too hard" caveat tacked on. I always considered my approach to literature rather dilettantish anyway.

This book is a collection of Mann's turn-of-the-century short stories that explore themes of the genius in art and intellect within a motif of the German at home and abroad. The stories share threads of recurring elements, illuminating the essential aspects of Mann's own creativity.

"Death in Venice," "Tonio Kroger," and "Disorder and Early Sorrow" were the only stories whose merits outweighed any untoward content. The other five, while undoubtedly well-written and with some merits of their own, alternated between sordid and dull, and so I am unable to give them praise that is not heavily qualified.

"Death in Venice": On a trip to Venice, an acclaimed author sights a young, attractive Polish Adonis of sorts, and, overwhelmed with the beauty of his countenance, forsakes reason to follow him for weeks on end. The boy's comely features send the man into philosophizing reveries on the nature of literary expression and the creator and his creation. "Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought- these are the artist's highest joy," he muses during his undaunted pursuit.

There is irony in Mann's name, for he examines extensively the emasculation of his linguistic artist. His protagonist asks, "[D]o you believe that such a man can ever attain wisdom and true manly worth, for whom the path to the spirit must lead through the senses?" This man's decidedly effeminate nature detracts from the intellectual insights he has, and he clearly tries to justify his unwholesome affection for the young boy under a guise of aesthetics. More's the pity.

"Tonio Kroger": Again the androgynous artist appears. Dark-complexioned Tonio Kroger lives the fitful, melancholy passion of the litterateur, silently envying the blue-eyed blonds who surround him in their blissful ignorance. He considers his artistic gifts a curse inherited from his mother's temperamental Italian blood, contending that he was not destined, but doomed, from birth, to create. However, a trip to Denmark gives him the presence of mind to accept and even revel in his love of the "blond and blue-eyed, the fair and living, the happy, lovely, and commonplace."

"Disorder and Early Sorrow": A professor and his young daughter experience a presentiment of later sorrows that inevitably come when she dances with one of her older brother's friends on a lark at a party. The five-year-old feels an indefinite sense of the envy and longing that accompany rejection when she has to go to bed and her humoring partner reunites with his date. Her father observes it all with a helpless pathos.

This was the purest of Mann's stories, exquisite in its sorrow, tender in its telling, noble and unwavering in its feeling. He was at the top of his form here.

Mann is splendid when he conducts esoteric discussions of Life and Art, as it were, but he often becomes mired in the disturbing and the unsavory. It's unfortunate, for he is a consummate writer.

He Who Thinks Has To Believe by A.E. Wilder-Smith

What a title, right? I've finally found someone who approaches the world in a manner I can accept. Wilder-Smith begins with just the sensory information to which every human being is privy, and he follows a logical line of reasoning to conclude that what the Bible says is truth. He attempts no emotional appeal, guilt trip, or sentimentality. In fact, as a professor of pharmacology, he insists that "try[ing] to 'believe' emotionally" leads to "dangerous emotionalism and hysteria," for it rebels against one's ratio, or sense of rationality.

The primary section of the book deals solely with a parable of an undiscovered tribe of "Neanderthalers." These "honest, thinking people" are able to reason from the evidence that natrually surrounds them and deduce that there must be a Creator, and He must desire reconciliation with them. When some explorers discover these people and try to enlighten them with assertions of a materialistic worldview, the Neanderthalers poke holes in their theories and hold steadfastly to theism, augmenting their beliefs with Christianity when they encounter a Bible.

The second part discusses the finer points of Wilder-Smith's theology. I'll attempt briefly to sum up the gist of his arguments. Because of the information present in matter, and because life never comes from non-life, we can conclude that a higher consciousness created the world. Because the creator is never less than the creation, we can conclude that this higher consciousness is personal as we are personal. Because this higher consciousness (for all intents and purposes God) is personal, we can conclude He desires interaction with us. Because genuine interaction requires one to be on the same wavelength of another, God has to manifest Himself as a man to achieve this interaction. Because of the historical accuracy, fulfilled prophecy, textual logic, and willing martyrdom of those involved, we can conclude that the Bible's account of such a manifestation is true.

There is more to it, but that is the essence of what Wilder-Smith posits. I found such dispassionate logic intensely gratifying. I'm sure someone could muster up a rebuttal to some of his points, especially those which he admits surpass the realms of human understanding, but spontaneous generation is still unsubstantiated, and surely the information coding of genetics cannot be left to chance. As Wilder-Smith says, "chance [is] an antipode, an antithesis of thought." Design comes not randomly.

Wilder-Smith lifted an onus of inability from my shoulders. I've been trying to legitmately, logically, articulate my claim to Christianity in a lucid, comprehensive fashion for over a year now, and it was not until Wilder-Smith's book that I found someone capable of doing so.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White

I was fortunate enough to acquire this revered manual for a dollar at a thrift store. The library wouldn't let me check it out, for they categorized it as a reference book. It's a surprisingly slim volume, under a hundred pages. The authors adhere to their own exhortations of brevity. They were condescending and affected at times, even as they instructed the reader to avoid such tones, but their composition advice is worth taking.

Much is review of the basic courtesies, as they'd have it, of the writer for his reader. Communicating effectively is the composer's essential goal. "Clarity can only be a virtue," White insists. They iterate the rudimentaries of grammar, punctuation, and the like. Strunk, especially, espouses brevity. The less said, the better. White is inclined to agree, and so am I.

I felt chastised on a few counts, such as the subject of qualifiers. Apparently, my use of "rather" is rather unnecessary and weak. "Interesting," too, is taboo, denounced as being unspecific. Not-positives, moreover, such as "not honest" or not important," should be replaced with positive assertions: "dishonest," insignificant."

One instruction, which I'd never heard before, resonated loudly with me: "Write with nouns and verbs," White says. "The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place." I'd always assumed all parts of speech were created equal, but upon reflection, White's adage rings wise. I assure you, I'll make a conscious effort in the future to write thusly.

Strunk and White have a few idiosyncratic preferences. They consider thanking someone in advance to be bad form, and the word "respectively" to be largely unneeded. White says the word "thruway," phonetic spelling and all, will become an established term. I think his prediction was a bit off. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say "thruway," and I can't say I could define it properly.

The authors do seem to be striving for a thoroughly early-20th-century, modern-1950s, sterilized tone with much of their advice, but who could begrudge them that? It was the early 20th century. But with that said, some of the manual's assertions may be grounds for reconsideration. The pervasively ironic tone of the post-(post?)modernist now employed by many writers sometimes involves a slight variance in acceptability. How's that for qualifiers?

Despite all the admonitions to take the reader into account when writing, White closes with this: "The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one." I can say that, barring a few assigned essays, I have always inclined that way; to what end I don't entirely know. Certainly some interesting (I don't care; I like the word) Young and Sharp Submissions.

Beowulf by Anonymous; translated by Seamus Heaney

What more appropriate book to commence a blog with than Beowulf? Below is my impression, as it were. You can view it, and many, many others, from here: http://www.geocities.com/dualphilology/beowulf.html

As the first surviving work in the English language, Beowulf has been elevated to a place of almost mystical reverence in literary circles. Tolkien was a foremost scholar on the epic poem, and the influences he derived from it form the very foundation of his own attempt at Northern European mythology. Indeed, the very grammatical structures of his invented languages, the questing motif, the treasure-guarding dragon, even the name Eomer, can be traced to Beowulf.

It has been said before, but it loses no truth in repetition: Beowulf speaks to a very fundamental, archetypal, germane (both literally and figuratively) set of emotions. The epic hero vanquishes his foes and rules triumphantly for many years, meeting his own end in a spectacular display of hubris, destroying his enemy even as it destroys him, dying a glorious death. Stories with these elements are found throughout the world's cultures, for honorable warfare has been an intrinsic desire of mankind, or mannas cynnes, as the Old English renders it, since its inception. Such values become a manner of survival for early, isolated people in a hostile environment.

I enjoyed the story, without a doubt, but more than that, I revelled in the poetry. Heaney's translation was superb, a delightfully readable versification that retained an archaic sensibility. Moreover, the original Old English was printed alongside, allowing me to trace the elements of Germanic roots that remain in our speech today. "Modor" (mother), "twelfye" (twelve), "wundor" (wonder), were all discernible; some such as "under" or "gold," have not changed at all.

First Post

I've decided to establish a blog to complement my fledgling website: www.geocities.com/dualphilology. Like how I used the correct version of "complement"? It's a collection of literary impressions, and I created it because I thought the Internet was curiously lacking in this area. I read a book, and then I write about it. I've been doing so for like a year and a half now, and I've amassed quite a cache of musings. A singular vocabulary, too.

Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore

While written in the late nineteenth century, Lorna Doone encompasses more than a decade of the 1600s in rural England. John Ridd is a farmer's son who, after a chance encounter with a young Lorna, becomes utterly enthralled with the girl and spends years pursuing her. She is ostensibly a member of the Doone clan, a family of terrors responsible for, among others, the death of John's father. Nevertheless, John purposes to persist in his wooing.

Carver Doone, who would have Lorna marry him, barricades her in her home without food for days. John rescues her and establishes her in his home. It is eventually revealed that Lorna is, in fact, a daughter of nobility who was raised by the Doones after they murdered her family, in order to gain her inheritance by marriage when she came of age. John foils all that. He leads a rebellion against the Doones, overthrowing their reign of the countryside, and he marries Lorna.

The book is rather lengthy, but I relished the comprehensiveness. In the beginning, I found John slightly distasteful, his continual self-deprecation and false modesty making a poor hero for a romantic adventure, but as I read further I discovered the humor in it all and engaged myself wholeheartedly in the story. Because it was so long, the book involved many, many plot twists, some of which were inevitably improbable. Still, I suppose it comes with the literary territory.

That Lorna was held in such a high position of impeccability did bother me a bit. Her beauty is her primary virtue, and John spends pages and pages extolling her hair, her eyes, and her figure. When he is not praising Lorna's unparalled, unimpeachable gorgeousness, John drones on about her tender-heartedness, her unflagging faithfulness, her modesty, her magnanimity—basically, her inability to do wrong. This, of course, forms an unattainable level of feminine perfection that can only be anathema to myself. I am a flawed individual, and so prefer to read about flawed individuals, especially as I have never met anyone who was anything but.

I can see how it fits into the comedy motif, though. For, of course, no one is perfect, and that John actually thinks Lorna is can only be played for laughs. While the novel had many humorous components, it had its share of poignant moments as well. Indeed, it was altogether a decent book. That it is rather obscure despitre its relatively recent inception may be due to the flaws I found in it. But Lorna Doone is essentially a good story, and a worthy work.

Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot

I like T.S. Eliot. He's a poet I can almost understand. by attempting to infuse his literary works with elements of spirituality, he espouses a cause to which I am sympathetic. Here, he dramatizes the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in December 1170. Eliot holds a deep respect for Becket, essentially canonizing the man in literary form.

As it is a play, the sound of the words is what takes center stage. From alliteration, to rhyme, to rhythm, to parallel construction, Eliot employs them all, creating the fundamentally poetic prose that is his signature. Soaked with profundity and implication, the play emphasizes Becket's momentous stand against his king in favor of his God. "I have been a loyal subject to my king. Saving my order, I am at his command," Becket declares to his would-be murderers, four knights who have cornered him in the cathedral.

Becket's inner conflicts are integral parts of the story. The first occurs before the period the play covers. He adopts an outlook of spiritual-mindedness upon assuming the position of Archbishop, which alienates his sensual friend the King and begins their schism. Within the time-frame of the play, Becket is visited by four tempters who attempt to capitalize on his weaknesses and dissuade him from holding fast to his convictions. He withstands them. "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

But Eliot's, and Becket's, misplaced Catholic beliefs impose themselves intermittently. Becket calls upon some saints to pray for him, and his congregation almost idolizese him, bemoaning his eventual death while thanking God for another saint to whom they could pray. Still, Becket proclaims he is "[a] Christian, saved by the blood of Christ," and it may be safe to assume that they were both believers.

The intellectual presentation of a religious protagonist is altogether encouraging. Such a treatment seems, in a manner, to bolster Christianity's legitimacy. Here an author is no longer decrying the state of affairs and positing existence as meaningless as he formerly did. Rather, he is celebrating the truth that he has found and rejoicing in one of the heroes of his faith. With this play, he invites us to join him.

In fact, that may be Eliot's larger purpose. The nameless "Chorus" plays the part of the audience to the drama that unfolds, mirroring the actual audience and reacting as, I am sure, Eliot would have us as spectators react. In the concluding speech, the Chorus cries: "Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man...whofear the hand...the fire...the fist...less than we fear the love of God."

Writing about Literature by B. Bernard Cohen

What an absolutely liberating book. I just started reading and could not stop. Mr. Cohen was a college professor, and he wrote this to assist students in composing effective essays of literary criticism. He discusses the basic theory of it all, and examines practical examples. He comes off a bit pretentiously sometimes, and I am not entirely sure if his credentials are sufficient for such an overarching treatise; but then, my credentials are not such that I was pass judgment on him, and so I have decided his is an authority to which I can legitimately defer.

"The elusiveness of any literary text can be one of its chief virtues," Cohen writes. "...[M]any literary works are so expansive and suggestive that they are subject to many interpretations." He insists that the student's interpretation of a given work can be just as valid as a professional literary critic's, if it is coherent, well thought out, and supported by textual evidence. Cohen gives examples of both effectively and poorly written essays and excerpts, citing strategies that can help one craft successful analyses.

Much of his advice is common sense, stuff I intuited years ago but which is comforting to hear coming from an expert. He is also quite realistic. "...[A] beginner cannot be expected to deliver revolutionary pronouncements," but he can draw his own conclusions. This was an incredibly gratifying statement for me, for to know that a professor accepts the limited capacities of his students relieves me of a scholarly burden.

Fascinatingly, Cohen mentions that "one has to realize that an author is not always aware of everything he puts into his story or poem," though one has to be careful not to read too much into a given work. From whence comes the basis for this view I do not know, though I think it may be Freudian in origin- and therefore now illegitimate?- because of the author's many references to psychology and its effects on literature in the 20th century. Nevertheless, it must be one that has pervaded literary criticism for some time now, and it certainly explains much.

Like The Britannica Book of English Usage, this manual answered many of the standing questions I never thought I could quell. It also provided me with excellent ideas on how to go about a literary analysis. Most of all, it strengthened my confidence in my ability to write. Mr. Cohen broke it all down in a manner I completely understood, giving my an unobstructed view of the path towards decent work.

The Britannica Book of English Usage

I've always had lingering questions about minor aspects of language, and this book went a far way in quelling some of my concerns. I know I did not absorb all of the excellent information it held, but it will make a splendid reference guide. I underlined most of the important stuff anyways.

I laughed right from the beginning. During a discussion of the origins of our language, I found this gem: "Among the great languages, French closely rivals English in perversity." Of course, it is speaking of arbitrary spelling conventions. But the delineation of the genesis of English was entirely absorbing, as were the sections on grammar, punctuation, and writing.

The grammar tutorial gave me names for many conventions I did not know how to label, and clarified some issues upon which I was fuzzy. It underscored the importance of maintaining an active voice whenever possible, praised the "Oxford comma" (the optional one that can go before "and" in a list), and insisted on hyphenating compound adjectives, all matters of usage that I recently employed, tentatively but, thankfully correctly, when editing another's essays.

The introduction to the pronunciation guide featured this comment: "...there is no accentless pronunciation any more than there is a flavorless coffee or an odorless perfume." This effectually obliterated any delusions I'd ever had about "talking straight," as I've always termed my own accent, which is comparable to the "Network Standard" held as an example in this book.

Besides the excellent advice and illuminating lists of allusions and foreign phrases, the writing section included a gratifying paragraph on Christianity. Speaking of Christianity's ascendancy over Greco-Roman myth, the book stated, "One of the reasons for the ultimate triumph of Christianity...was the fact that...it dealt with the...spiritual needs of the time in a more rational manner than did its rivals." The text is carefully equivocating, to be sure, but it essentially states that Christianity has elements of rationality. Score one for the home team.

There is so much more to this volume. It is a reference book, but I found it exceeedingly readable. On the whole, I seem to be in line with standard usage, and I am sure whatever I am lacking can be easily remedied. I'll end with this quote: "Our language derives much of its force and speed from its hard consonants and crisp word endings. To ignore these qualities with...an exaggerated drawl is to insult the magnificence of our English tongue."