Continuous Vivid Dream

I didn’t read much as the school year came to a close.  It seems that the last few months of the school year always affects concentration (as an educator), and I never can finish reading anything substantial.  I managed to finish the The Left Edge of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin and I almost made it to the end of Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.  I cannot figure out all the fuss around the Stranger in the Strange Land.  I wasn’t captivated by the storyline, found its portrayal of women as undesirable, and I will just chalk my distate for this award-winning novel to end-of-the-year distraction.

I’ve started digging into a number of books, Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Freedom by David Suarez, reserved a number of books (David Mitchell’s new novel, The Big Short by Michael Lewis, the Passage by Justin Cronin), checked some audio books (The Long Tail, Wikinomics, Great Divorce) and surely will find some unexpected treats.

Maybe I will see where Your Next Read leads me.

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro is the story of a prominent detective, Christopher Banks, and a serious events that leads to his family’s disappearance as a child and how this event ultimately colors his entire life.  This novel lacks the usual substance of a detective story.  The story does not concern itself with the nitty gritty details of television mysteries or detective serials like evidence and Sherlock Holmes-like reveals.  The story jumps from Shanghai to England and back again as an adult, as Christopher reflects on his early childhood friendship with a boy in the neighborhood, Akiro, and his parent’s sudden disappearance and his inevitable need to leave Shanghai and live in England.

As a reader, I felt dragged along through Christopher’s rise and continual determination to learn of his parents’ fate.  We often hear of his growing success and fame as a detective, but the novel fails to provide any real evidence of his genius of solving murders.  In fact, I often felt like Christopher is more of witness to his life as opposed to an active participant.  Christopher takes all the incorrect routes to the truth and apparently stumbles on to what really happened to this family: a sudden and disturbing conclusion.  The novel is more about the story of Banks’ friendships with Akiro and a somewhat hopeless socialite, Sarah Hemmings.

When We Were Orphans is a satisfying read, and certainly has encouraged me to read Ishiguro’s other works.  I certainly would have appreciated a more dynamic protagonist in the end.

I’ve always been fascinated by Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 since I first read them.  It’s been many more than five years since I’ve picked up either novel and I remember they both had a significant impact when I first read them.  I forgot much of the story line of both novels and found myself engaged once again learn of the protagonist’s outcomes.  Both novels, as you may well know, end quite unfavorably.

The interesting aspect of both of these novels is that they are a celebration of modern life experienced by a part of the world’s population.  The novels create a portrayal of future societies.  In Brave New World, society is divided into classes, conditioned from an early age, and controlled through the use of anti-depressant medication called soma.  1984 tells of a society of absolution control, telescreens in every place of residence, children who rat out their parents, and a populace controlled through terror and fear.

One interesting fact of both societies is civilization as we first world countries today experience exists on the remote fringes of these societys in the “proles” or proletariats (1984) and the “savages” of the reservation (Brave New World).  It is not as if something similar to human civilization today is non-existent.  Ultimately, our protagonists, Bernard Marx, the Savage, and Winston Smith seek what we experience today: freedom of thought and expression, creativity, privacy, sexual behavior, family, and intimacy.  It’s refreshing to see these characters sneaking and pursuing the simple pleasures of life we have access to every day: a mother or father, a private space, a sexual experience, or a quiet time along with a book.  At the least, these novels should make us realize our fortune in many of our freedoms.

Both societies presented in these two novels are disturbing in their own way, but I find the picture of society in the Brave New World the most controversial to imagine (perhaps because I was raised in a more Puritanical society regarding sex).  I struggle to conceive of a society that would accept popping a pill whenever you feel low, conditioning children from the earliest age to a particular class distinction, accepting a non-monogamous lifestyle from an early age, and denying any suffering or hardship.  We seen this type of world in current media from the Matrix (accepting to live numb to the real world) to Wall-E (the pleasure society of food and entertainment), a society dulled by pleasure unable to think or function as humans.  The Savage’s and his mother’s introduction into this world shows the dramatic difference between our paradigm and the world presented.

1984′s portrayal of a dictatorial society is extreme notwithstanding.  It is a complete denial of Self and freedom.  There may be nothing worse than torturing someone until they deny everything they believe in, their beliefs, their values, the ones they love, until they are a true believers, accepting falsities as truth.

I’m quite surprised that these novels are held in such high esteem.  Maybe it’s partly due to the times in which the novels were written, between the two world wars (Brave New World — 1932 and 1984 — 1949), when government atrocities seemed commonplace. I’m thankful that society today does not resemble anything these writers foresaw.  The future here is nothing, but bleak.  Perhaps they serve as a cautionary tale that provided guidance to generations before in terms of preserving the freedoms we enjoy.

I’m glad I reread both novels, and I’m certain it will not be the last time.  I’m sorry I hadn’t revisted these novels at an earlier date.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann is a heartwarming (breaking?) story told from at least ten perspectives all surrounding a historic event of a tightrope walker’s path between the two towers of the World Trade Center.  I never read the dust jacket of the novel before I started reading, and had no clue how the story would change perspective from character to character, never once returning back to a previous character (besides the tightrope walker himself).  It’s an intriguing storytelling device reminiscent of Ghostwritten by David Mitchell.  As opposed to that other excellent novel, the narrator and the interconnectedness of each character to the overall story is much more apparent.

I confess I enjoyed the segments focusing on the characters of Claire and Gloria the most and believe are most central to the overall story.  The loss of their children brings them together through a meeting and ultimately leads to a bond and relationship that will benefit the children of a catastrophic accident.  This is also one of the first novels to celebrate the power of the programmer through Claire’s story of her son.

The tightrope walker’s feat stands as a powerful symbol and inspiration to all who witnessed it through the novel.  Despite the tightrope walker’s lawlessness (breaking into the Towers and walking on a wire), even the judge (Claire’s husband) who gets his case only sentences him one penny per flight ($1.10).

My only annoyance with the novel is that these storytelling chapters seemed to bog down the overall flow of the story.  It felt like a new restart with each new character and his/her background, preventing the usual momentum of a good story to repeatedly become broken, clearly failing to maintain the “continuous” nature of the vivid dream.  But overall, Let the Great World Spin is an exemplary novel worth reading.

I also picked up Under the Dome, Stephen King’s latest tome, and after three hundred pages, I lost the interest in reading further.  The premise is too far-fetched, probably as far-fetched as four suicide jumpers meeting on the top of a building at the same New Year’s Eve party.  An invisible dome suddenly appears around a small town in Maine, and now the inhabitants have to figure out how to survive under the circumstances.  Add a serial killer and an outcast promoted to Colonel in a hostile town and do you have enough to keep your interest?  Nah, I’ll take Stephen King’s Tommyknockers and let this one go.

I recently finished two novels I had been hoping to read: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and Invisible By Paul Auster.

I started The Corrections years ago, following the Oprah debacle, where Franzen didn’t want it to be considered an Oprah book (foolishly).  I made it about one hundred pages into the novel when I first attempted it, but I lost interest, partly due to reader’s block.  The novel is certainly not in my opinion the Great American Novel, though it’s a remarkably top-notch novel about an American family in modern society, and a sadly dysfunctional family at that.  The novel focuses on the parents (Enid and Alfred) and the three children (Gary, Denise and Chip) over the course of one particular year when Alfred is suffering from a combination of old-age diseases, Parkinson’s disease and dementia.   The novel builds up to a final Christmas together as a family.  The novel is darkly humorous, and if you’re the type of reader who likes upbeat and positive themed novels, The Corrections is one to avoid.

What makes The Corrections excellent is the realism and tragedy of each character: Alfred, a long employee of a railroad has reached the point in his life where illness cripples and overtakes him; Enid desires to still find pleasure late in her life and schedules a cruise and banks all her energies on a final family reunion; Gary refuses to accept his depression and midlife crisis, but eventually succumbs witnessing the family dynamics in his own house with his wife and sons; Chip runs away to a crumbling third world country on a whim after losing everything; and Denise makes her way to success as a chef and explores her sexuality in her relationships with her boss and his wife.  Anyone who has experienced life in a large, troubled family might find The Corrections resounds especially true.  I certainly have come across some of these types of people in my own family at times.

Invisible is Paul Auster’s newest effort, and like most Auster’s novels, it is unconventional.  There is not a clear linear story here.  The narrator changes along its path: beginning with a young student, Adam Walker, who hands it off to a classmate, who finally hands the story-telling duty to a female acquaintance.  The novel focuses on a single year: 1967, though the real story is modern.  The unconventional nature of the novel is it’s difficult to know where truth and story overlap.  The first section is written in the spirit of a novelist, but later discounted as false by Walker’s sister.  The middle section is retold by Walker’s classmate.  The last section is told through diary entries of one of Walker’s early female acquaintances.  It’s part of this storytelling that has always compelled me to read Auster in the past–the telling is sometimes as important as the story itself, and it sometimes becomes the entertaining in itself.

Adam Walker early in his career meets a couple and becomes the lucky recipient of a generous donation to write a literary magazine by an older professor, Rudolf Born.  Soon after their meeting, Walker witnesses a horrific crime committed by his benefactor.  The overall task of the novel is to come to an understanding of the truth behind Walker and Born’s relationship, through their stories as well as key figures who knew them .  The novel even packs a significant late act twist in learning more about Born’s nature.  I am rarely dissatisfied by anything written by Paul Auster, and the case is true here, though it’s not quite as satisfying as his other works like the Book of Illusions, Music of Chance and the New York Trilogy.

Many authors have the advantage of wizards and vampires and spies and guns to drive a story, but Richard Russo has manage to craft some quite memorable and engaging stories with the raw material of life, marriage and death.  In his newest novel, That Old Cape Magic, Richard Russo manages to take the year in the life of an older married couple to reflect on the nature of relationships, especially as we grow older and our parents leave us.

The story begins on a telling note, Griffin drives alone to a wedding of an old family friend, his daughter’s friend, Kelsey.  Foreshadowing the year to come, Griffin struggles to come to grips with his father’s recent death and his past decisions in his marriage with Joy.  It’s been said that marriage includes not only the married couple, but the parents too.  The story revolves around relationships: Griffin with his wife, Joy, his daughter, Laura, his parents, and his wife’s parents and family.

I found the most poignant section of this lighter Russo-tale related to his memory of a family vacation to the Cape where the past continually changes over time, later becoming a short story he wants to share with Joy during this year of separation. The novel begins and ends with a marriage, surrounding a year of separation.  There are a number of fun moments in Cape Magic deciphering the sign in the bar, his father-in-law’s imprisonment in a hedge, and his building friction with his wife’s brothers.

That Old Cape Magic is a short and pleasant read and certainly a nice compliment to his larger works.  It has made me want to check out Nobody’s Fool.  I saw the movie at least fifteen years ago, so I’m sure the story will be new and rewarding.

Dan Choan’s Await Your Reply is a cautionary tale of the effects of identity theft.  Actually, it’s three interwoven stories that lead to a final reveal.  The discovery of how the three stories converge does not take place until the last few pages. In a gist, the three stories include a teenage girl who runs away with her high school teacher, a twin brother who searches across the states for his counterpart for ten years, a son and father who engage in a number of criminal acts by assuming multiple identities.  The gimmick of the novel is that the three stories which seem to occur in sequence are in fact stories taking place at different periods in time.

Though Choan is a competent storyteller, Await Your Reply lacks compelling characters.  In fact, I’ve never so many foolish and misguided individuals than Lucy, Miles, and Ryan.  It’s frightening to think that “real” human beings would be so easily convinced to leave behind everything and sacrifice so much on the words of a single con man.  The novel lacks any element of suspense or discovery.  The characters are passive and seem to lack a pulse.  I wouldn’t recommend Await Your Reply to other readers, but I will probably try another one of Choan’s novels and see if this is a one-time publishing accident.

As the year comes to a close, I reflect on my year in reading.  I finished eighteen books, sixteen fiction novels, including two monstrous works in 2666 and Infinite Jest (took nine weeks to finish, three renewals), and two non-fiction books (The Nine and Say Everything).  Of the novels, I’d say only two of them were non-literary: Replay and Daemon.  Of the novels below, my favorites and ones I’d recommend to anyone who loves a good story are: Atmospheric Disturbances, Revolutionary Road, and Death with Interruptions.  Revolutionary Road clearly would fall into one of my favorites of all time.  Atmospheric Disturbances was a pleasant surprise and well worth reading again.  I punted on a number of books this year even though they have received awards: Snow, What Would Google Do?, and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Maybe if they receive praise ten years from now, I’ll revisit them again.  Novels I feel rather lukewarm about, leaving me rather unsatisfied despite the praise were: The Road, 28th Hour, and the Alchemist.  The biggest disappointments: Chronic City, Choke, and Daemon.

• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• Anthem, Ayn Rand
• 28th Hour, David Benioff
• Chronic City, by Johnathan Lethem
• Infinite Jest, David Wallace Foster
• 2666, Roberto Bolano
• Replay, Ken Grimwood
• Say Everything, Ken Rosenberg
• The Nine, Jeffrey Toobin
• Atmospheric Disturbences, Rikva Galchen
• Daemon, Daniel Suarez
• Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara
• Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
• The Alchemist, Paolo Coehlo
• Choke, Chuck Palahniuk
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy
• All the Names, Jose Saramago
• Death with Interruptions, Jose Saramago

I finished two short novels and gave up another this month.  I picked up The 25th Hour partly because of the constant apperance of David Benioff’s name everywhere I turned and this was his first novel.  I saw the movie years ago and it was one of those movies that I remembered enjoying, but could only remember a couple plot points of the story (most notably the beating at the end and the World Trade Center scene).  This is not surprising.

The novel is basically about three friends, the life choices they made and how it led to a final destination.  What makes 25th hour a pleasurable read is it’s not a conventional plot-driven story, but more about setting and relationships.  The main character, Monty, is about to serve a seven-year sentence for drug trafficking, and the story focuses on this last day.  The writing is refreshing, concise and thoughtful.  The World Trade Center scene is not in this novel (written prior to 2001).  Benioff succeeds in drawing into the lives of Monty and his two best friends, his girlfriend, and the criminal life he chose at a young age.

I finally gave in and checked out Anthem from the library.  I could not finish it on my IPod Touch.  Even though Anthem is a short read, I could never make much progress reading it on an electronic device.  I finished the second half in one sitting and it reminds me of my positive affection for the Fountainhead when I was younger.  This notion of individualism strikes me as funny today, considering we need less of the focus on “I” and more on “We.”  Americans are often faulted as being some of the most selfish of groups, and Rand’s doctrine of individualism is fully ingrained in most of us.  But Anthem shares the power of other novels in the same strand like Brave New World and 1984, the struggle for freedom, as a people and an individual.  Anthem represents many of the significant ideas of Ayn Rand’s individualistic philosophy in a condensed version as our protagonist, Equality, breaks from the confines of an oppressive society dictated by group conformity.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby has a preposterous premise, and though I tried to finish it, I could never fully overlook the possibility of such an encounter ever happening.  Would you buy this premise: Four strangers all planning to commit suicide on New Year’s Eve at the same moment on the same building, not only don’t jump, but bond together to find meaning to prevent them from jumping in the future.  I mean I might accept two people coming together, but four?  I gave it about hundred and fifty pages of my time, but this is no High Fidelity.

I doubt I will remember Chronic City for long, except for chaldrons and a devasting tiger. The latter, which continually makes an appearance through the novel is a phantasm.  I’m not even sure what it really is: a bulldozer of mass destruction like the monster in Lost mythology.

As the book came to an end, I’m even more uncertain about the facts of story and the details of the protagonist, Chase Insteadman’s life.   I read most of the novel thinking he was a famous ex-child actor living off the residuals of a sitcom and in disrespect to his astronaut girlfriend imprisoned in a space station.   But the extraneous three to five chapters (I kept wondering when the novel would end)  challenged everything established before, and left me more confused.  I feel like I know less in certainty about Chase now that I’ve finished it, and I’ve seldom been less interested in characters as in those in Chronic City.

Certainly Chronic City is the story of a friendship, since the course of the novel begins with Chase’s meeting of Perkus Tooth and ends with his unexpected death.  We share in their meetings as they banter about high and low culture and the happenings of Manhattan under a pot-filled high.  The whole journey is on the most part uninteresting and distant from my reality.

The reason I managed to finish Chronic City is I confess a certain appreciation for Jonathan Lethem’s writing style, and at points the novel reminded me of the highlights of the Fortress of Solitude (a novel that I reread passages because of some of the brilliance).  There were some highlights for me here too: the sporadic letters from his make-believe astronaut girlfriend, Janice, the description of Perkus’ last night in the waiting room of the ER, and the group’s desire to seek and acquire a chaldron on EBay.

I fear a trend that occurs with many great writers that they will hit their finest note in one work, and never dare come close again.