Clarissa Readalong Update #1

Hi everyone. A while back I signed up to join the month-long readalong for Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. The goal is to read this nearly million word tome in one month, April 2012.

I began a little late, I started around April 4th and I'm still only around page 130, out of the 1500 pages... One problem I have is that I don't want to carry it around with me. Not only would it make my bag to heavy but I think it might start to rip and fall apart if it's handled too much, so I try to read it at home when I have the chance.

However, I am thoroughly enjoying what I have read so far and even if it takes me a little longer than a month, or a few months, to finish, it will be well worth the effort.

Please head on over to aliteraryodyssey.blogspot.com for more details on the readalong and a wonderful blog in general. I will try to keep updating here with my progress and thoughts on Clarissa.



Readalong: Vanity Fair by William Thackeray Post 2

I am participating in the readalong of Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. This is the second post of two for Vanity Fair.

Vanity Fair was an interesting read. I loved the first half, which I posted about here. But I began to get bored through parts of the second half. There were a lot of lists and descriptions of the aristocracy, which I just don't care about as much as the main characters stories.

However, when the story focused on the main characters, I loved the book! I wanted to know more about Becky Sharp and Amelia's lives. I was very interested in Becky's characters. I found her scheming amusing, although I would not want her for a friend in real life. I thought Becky did have at least some personal insight to her own character when she said:

'I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle about in the nursery, and count the apricots on the wall' ... And who knows but Rebecca was right in her speculations-and that it was only a question of money and fortune which made the difference between her and an honest woman? If you take temptations in account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbour? A comfortable career of prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at least keeps them so. (page 414)

There are many quotes in Vanity Fair that I like, especially the ones about Becky. This is one of my favorites:

He [Lord Steyne] saw at a glance what had happened in his absence: and was grateful to his wife for once. He went and spoke to her, and called her by her Christian name, so as again to bring blushes to her pale face-'My wife say have been singing like an angel,' he said to Becky. Now there are angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are charming in their way. (page 482)

I love that Thackeray just can't resist throwing in another jibe at Becky's character! She may sing like an angel, but there are two sorts of angels, so guess which one she is!

Finally, one of my other favorite characters is William Dobbin. At first I didn't like him much because he was always sacrificing himself for others instead of trying to make himself happy, but at the end of the book, that changed and I believe that he became of the hero in the 'Novel without a Hero.' Finally, on page 662, Dobbin leaves Amelia! I love it! He finally takes control of his life and decides to leaves Amelia since she isn't able to love him back:

I know what your heart is capable of: it can cling faithfully to a recollection, and cherish a fancy; but it can't feel such an attachment as mine deserves to mate with, and such as I would have won from a woman more generous than you. No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardour against your little feeble remanany of love. I will bargain no more: I withdraw. I find no fault with you. Youa re very good-natured, and have done your best; but you couldn't-you couldn't reach up to the height of the attachment which I bore you, and which a loftier soul than yours might have been proud to share. Good-bye, Amelia! I have watched your struggle. Let it end. We are both weary of it.

I know I've included quite a few quotes, but I love how they are written. These words show the personalities of the characters. While Vanity Fair  is not an easy book to get through, I do think that it is worth it. The characters are interesting and well-described and the ending for them is justified. Some of the passages are incredibly humorous, mostly sarcastic or sardonic and witty.



Readalong: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky Post 4

I am participating in the readalong for The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, hosted by A Literary Odyssey. This is the fourth post of 4 total posts, it covers Part 4 in The Idiot. My previous posts can be found here: First Post Second Post Third Post

I stayed up late last night to finish The Idiot. The end of The Idiot certainly reaches a climax where all of the characters seem to run around like chickens with their heads cut off. They accuse each other of being scandalous or attention-seeking and refuse to listen to each other, preferring to live with their own views of the events around them.

Prince Myshkin is caught between two women, Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaia Epanchin. They both want him and make claims on him, which he tries to please. The Prince is far too good-hearted and/or simple to realize that he needs to make his own decision for his life and stick with it. Instead, at the critical moment in this love triangle, he falls short and stays to take care of Nastasya instead of rushing after Aglaia, whom he actually cares for. This split-moment decision really decides the fate for these three unhappy characters, as well as the surrounding characters.

Dostoevsky gives an unhappy ending to each of these characters, which I'll leave for you to read yourself, but I'm not really sure what the point is that he's trying to make with their fates. Is it their modern society/focus on money that leads them to destruction? Is it the prince's goodness that destroys them- perhaps connecting their fates to that of Jesus' in Holbein's painting that Dostoevsky mentions several times. And what is the point of Rogozhin's character and actions? He plays the pivotal action in Nastaya's fate but I'm still a little unclear as to why this was necessary? I just don't understand Rogozhin at all- is he (and everyone else) just crazy?!

I liked this story by Dostoevsky for the analysis of the characters and the story, which is actually pretty simply, that it told. The characters are definitely Dostoevsky's strong point. As I pointed out in post 3, I believe that Dostoevsky is amazing at portraying madness and despair. However, there were a few things that I did not like; for example, characters often went off in tangents during their conversations that, I assume, were Dostoevsky's own thoughts but that did not often lend anything to the story. I enjoyed some of these views in the beginning of the story that were about execution and exile of prisoners because I knew that it directly related to Dostoevsky's own life, but later on the views got to be tedious and I didn't know why I was reading them.

Readalong: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

I am participating in the readalong of Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. This is the first post of two for Vanity Fair.

I am halfway through the novel now, the first 34 chapters are behind me. This is my first time reading Vanity Fair  and so far it reminds me of the characters from Gone with the Wind and the scope of War and Peace. The subtitle of the novel is 'A Novel without a Hero,' which hints at the fact that most of the characters are not good people, similar to Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Notably, Becky Sharp, in Vanity Fair, is a selfish girl who knows how to connive and beguile people to get her way.

Becky can be very sweet and gentle when it suits her, which is how she behaves through most of the beginning of the novel, but then she shows her true colors more and more as moves through the ranks of people. Many of the other characters also use each other for their own gain, either money or social connections. The superficial and selfish connections between the characters really drive home the point that this is a novel without a hero and Thackeray's criticism of wealth.

There are a few good characters, namely Amelia, who befriended Becky when she was poor and lonely, and Dobbins, who is in love with Amelia but still helps his friend to marry her. Although Thackeray includes these inherently good characters, so far at least, nothing good has happened to them. They suffer needlessly because of the selfishness of those around them. Therefore, they are not heroes but victims to society.

Although there really doesn't appear to be a hero in Vanity Fair, I'm still drawn into the story. I love that it covers the lives of many different characters so that we get a feel for the whole society rather than just one or a few characters. I also appreciate Thackeray's/the narrators interjections into the story. At first I was annoyed that he interrupted the story but then I began to find them humorous, my favorite times are when the narrator says that he is not privy to certain information, like what a character is thinking at that moment.... but come on, we get the feeling that this is an omniscient narrator, so why do they not know what the character is thinking?!

I'm looking forward to finishing Vanity Fair  because I want to see how it ends for a lot of the characters, especially Becky and Amelia. Will Becky get her comeuppance and Amelia be rewarded or is that not how it works in Vanity Fair?



Readalong: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky Post 3

I am participating in the readalong for The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, hosted by A Literary Odyssey. This is the third post of 4 total posts, it covers Part 3 in The Idiot. My previous posts can be found here: First Post Second Post

 

 

In this third post on The Idiot, I want to focus on madness and border between sane and insane. I think Dostoevsky is a master at depicting characters who often precariously tread this border, my opinion coming from reading The Idiot, Crime and Punishment (my all-time favorite book!), and Notes from Underground.

 

 

There are several characters who display at least some periods of madness throughout The Idiot, including many in Part 3.

 

 

First, there is Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who even describes herself as a "'foolish, ill-mannered little kook' and suffered from suspcion, continually lost her bearings, could see no way out of the most ordinary contingencies, and constantly magnified every misfortune." Several times throughout the story, Lizaveta Prokofyevna greatly overreacts to the situation at hand and may even fall in a swoon. While her brand of 'madness' doesn't really separate her from society, she definitely does have some tendencies towards madness.

 

 

Both Nastasya and Aglaia also display some madness. Nastasya leans towards a self-destructive and self-blame madness while Aglaia, I think, may be showing more of just a harder time growing up and dealing with the realities of life that are different from her imaginations. Natasya refuses to go with Myshkin, or any other better man, and instead chooses Rogozhin, a man whom she believes will eventually kill her. Nastasya has extremely low self-esteem and works herself up to make decisions that she knows will ruin her. Her letters to Aglaia are also proof that she lives in a fevered state. Nastasya writes to Aglaia stating she looks up to Aglaia as a model of perfection and wishes only she (Aglaia) would marry Prince Myshkin since they both perfect people, whom Nastasya loves but is not good enough to be loved back by either of them. Nastasya's actions so far through the first three parts of The Idiot show that she is insane and unwell.

 

 

Another strong instance of insanity is during Prince Myshkin's 'birthday party' when Ippolit begins to read his notes. The beginning of his speech reminded me of Crime and Punsihment, when Ippolit speaks of his 'Ultimate Convinction,' just as Raskolnikov focuses solely on his own theory of superior men, like Napoleon, who are supposedly justified in all of the actions because they are superior. Ippolit describes that his 'Ultimate Conviction' consumed him, just as Raskolnikov's theory ate at him until he had to act on it. Ippolit is determined to kill himself as the sun rises after he reads his explanation to the party. This determination comes from wanting to have one more act of free will before consumption takes him. However, as the moment comes for the histerical Ippolit, since no one believes that he will actually shoot himself, it turns out that Ippolit, accidentally or not, forgot to load the pistol before shooting himself. Clearly this is a moment of insanity for Ippolit since he did try to shoot himself and even detailed the madness of his decision leading up to that moment.

 

 

Dostoevsky's works include a lot of madness, which often makes compelling characters. I think a lot of his personal experiences contributed to being able to describe these moments for the characters, he was part of the Petrashevsky Circle, his mock execution and subsequent exile to Siberia, and then his gambling and money problems later in life which probably showed him the underbelly of Russian society.

 

 

Readalong: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky Post 2

I am participating in the readalong for The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, hosted by A Literary Odyssey. This is the second post of 4 total posts, it covers Part 2 in The Idiot. My first post can be found here.

I am really enjoying The Idiot, as I do most 19th century Russian literature. I love the characters most of all. Each character has a personality and back story and they all respond to situations differently.

My two favorite characters are Prince Myshkin and Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

I love Prince Myshkin's innocence and belief in people. Many people assume that he is an idiot, or at least very simple, but he does have an acute understanding of most people and situations. He often remains fairly calm during stressful situations, although they can make him go into an epileptic seizure. He also blushes a lot when people directly accuse him of anything, which I find endearing.

I also like Lizaveta, who is Myshkin's remaining relative. Lizaveta overreacts to situations and can talk her mouth off when she's upset. She is also very impulsive. For example, she is offended by the Prince at his house towards the end of Part 2 when the common people show up, but she comes back only 3 days later to make sure that they are alright and to invite him to her house.

Part 2 of The Idiot is based less on action and more on intrigue and gossip. In the beginning, the reader doesn't follow Prince Myshkin around personally, we only get hints of what he's been up to through the gossip of people in St. Petersburg. Later when the Prince comes back, a lot of characters show up at his apartment and plenty of people get offended and overworked. I love the gossip and scandals that form their society. An especially good example of this is when they are leaving Myshkin's and Nastasya shows up and tells Yevgeny that she has promissory notes of his and she uses the familiar form of 'you' instead of the formal form! OMG! How could she do that?! Now the Epanchin family doesn't want to talk to him since Nastasya used the familiar form and there's a slight possibility that she wasn't lying about the IOU's.

I am highly enjoying re-reading this great classic. Thank you Allie for hosting this readalong! The next post for The Idiot is on June 15.



Readalong: The Iliad by Homer Post 2

I am participating in the readalong hosted by A Literary Odyssey for The Iliad by Homer. This is the second, and final post for The Iliad. Here is my first post for The Iliad.

I've come to the conclusion that everyone in this book is selfish and no one is inherently good- including the gods. They are killing each other over one woman! If only Paris could have controlled his libido and not have stolen another man's wife, the Achaeans need not spend 10 years outside of Troy trying to kill them. I think Achilles is probably the most selfish of all since he refused to fight because he was insulted (when Agememnon took her prize, a girl). Yet, he sits there and watches the battle because he wants to see his former allies fall in battle. When his best friend dies though, he is outraged and goes on a killing rampage. So don't insult Achilles because then he won't help you when you need it and don't kill his friend because then he seeks out revenge with an overwhelming vengeance.

I don't think Achilles is fully redeemed when he is kind to Priam, king of Troy, and returns Hector's body and lets the Trojans bury him properly. I definitely think it was a step forward in maturity for Achilles but he was pretty awful throughout the story.

However, these are complaints of the characters and a great book can be made up of terrible characters. I have two complaints for the story itself. 1.- the second half of the book was made up very long battle scenes that chronicles the name of the dead, the graphic cause of death, their killer, their fathers, and homelands. I liked the excitement and adventurous feeling of the battle scenes, but I think narrating each death was a little too much.

I also did not like the ending of the book. The Iliad ends with the burial of Hector. Well..... how did the war end? We aren't told. We assume that the day of Hector's burial, they began fighting again but we don't know how it ended up. I'm just not sure why it ended there.

After all of these complaints, I must say that I did enjoy reading The Iliad for the most part. I really enjoyed the first half. I am also proud of myself for reading this since I had tried once before but wasn't able to finish it. Did anyone else have any problems with the unending battle scenes or the ending? I plan to follow this up with reading The Odyssey.

Readalong: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky Post 1

I am participating in the readalong for The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, hosted by A Literary Odyssey. I read The Idiot once before in high school, after I read Crime and Punishment, which began my everlasting love of 19th century Russian literature. Since it's been quite a few years since I had forgotten the plot, although as I read it certain parts come back to me.

Like I said, I LOVE 19th century Russian literature, I even took a class on it in college two years ago. In that class we read War and Peace (Tolstory), Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), Dead Souls (Gogol), and select short stories and poems by Pushkin. I even saw Eugene Onegin at the opera- based off of Pushkin's story. It was a great class and I loved everything we read. I just wish that I had taken a Russian history course so I would have more of a background to some of the novels.

Anyways, onto The Idiot.

The Idiot is about a Russian Prince's, who spent many years at a sanatorium in Switzerland, return to Russia. Prince Myshkin arrives in St. Petersburg and sets off to introduce himself to his very distant relatives and find a place to live. The husband of his distant relative is a General and helps find him accomodations. Along the way, Prince Myshkin is introduced to some of the General's family and staff, as well as the potential fiance of Ganya, one of the General's staff. Upon seeing a picture of Nastasya, Ganya's almost fiance, the Prince feels an immediate connection to the beautiful woman.

Nastasya is an interesting character. She is a kept woman by a rich man, Totsky, in St. Petersburg. Totsky is attempting to pay Ganya 75,000 rubles to marry Nastasya so that he can be free from her. Another man, Rogozhin, has also fallen in love with Nastasya and is able to collect 100,000 rubles, even though he is from the poorer class, to buy Nastasya for himself. At Nastasya's birthday party, she has a mental breakdown from the three men there who want her- Ganya, Rogozhin, and Prince Myshkin. They all want her for different reasons, money, sexuality, and innocent goodness. Natasya's birthday party is definitely the most interesting scene in Part 1 of The Idiot.

The title of the book comes from the assumption that everyone makes with regard to Prince Myshkin. Most people believe that the Prince is an idiot because he is simple and innocent. However, we see that often reads people better than anyone else and perhaps his simplicity allows him to see the world clearer than others and he is not stupid at all. Therefore, we are suppose to question the assumed link between innocence and idiocy, do they go together or can you be innocent without being stupid? There are still three more parts in The Idiot to find out.

Another part that I found interesting is the time that Prince Myshkin tells people  about his thoughts on capital punishment (which just happened to come up in conversation). Prince Myskin thinks capital punishment is far worse than committing murder because the victim of murder can cling to hope that they may survive while someone being killed under capital punishment spends there last moments knowing that they face certain death. These passages are haunting in their detail and passion. Furthermore, Prince Myskin's take on more depth when the reader knows that Dostoevsky was actually sentenced to death by firing squad for taking part in a revolutionary act. He was actually led in front of the firing squad and prepared for death before he found out that his sentence had been commuted to several years of hard labor in Siberia. Therefore, we may believe that Prince Myshkin's thoughts on the moments before certain death may actually be what Dostoevsky experienced- which is quite fascinating...

Overall, I love this book and can't wait to read more!



Readalong: The Iliad by Homer Post 1

I am participating in the readalong hosted by A Literary Odyssey for The Iliad by Homer. I had tried to read this book once before during my freshman year of college, but I ended up dropping the class that was using this book, so I never made it past the first few pages... the book completely daunted me then.

The Iliad is about the ten year Trojan War. The Trojan War was fought between the Achaeans and the Trojans in Ancient Greece. The Iliad starts in the ninth year of the ten year war. This battle started over the famed Helen of Troy. Paris, a Trojan, stole Helen from Menelaus, an Achaean, which is the cited reason for the Achaeans going to war with the Trojans. I think it is important to know this context before starting the book since it is an epic poem and not a narrative. There is very little explanation for the readers.

One thing I found most interesting with The Iliad is the history and origin of the story. The alleged author of The Iliad, Homer, was a possible blind and/or illiterate story teller/bard. Very little definitive information is known about him or even if he wrote the entire version of The Iliad or merely compiled well-known stories to form his epic poem. There are also Shakespeare-like ideas where some people don't think Homer was the author, or authors, of The Iliad.

I am reading the translation by Robert Fagles, which I am really enjoying. While the story is a poem, the language is still accessible enough for me to read it as an enjoyable story. I like that there also feels like there is a certain cadence to the writing, which makes it easy to imagine how it would sound like if the story was being told aloud.

Overall, I am halfway through this poem and I love the epic battles and the tempers of the men. My favorite parts, though, are the gods. They interfere so much with the course of the battles and each god has their own favorite mortal to protect. The involvement of the gods makes the battle seem even larger and more grandiose.

Readalong: Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence: Post 2

This is the second, and final, post for the Lady Chatterley's Lover readalong, hosted by A Literary Odyssey. My first post can be found here.

I generally liked the second half of this book more than the first half. I did not connect with any of the characters right away, but in the second half, the characters become more personable. This is especially true of  Mellors, the gamekeeper and Connie's lover. We know very little about him from the first except that is very reserved. In the latter half of the novel, we see that he really does care about Connie and wants her as she is, she is not just a sex object for him but a person. We also learn more of his history, which I thought was interesting. Mellors served in the army for a while.  He also was separated from his wife, who tried coming back, but she was crazy and just tries to hurt him. One of the things I liked the most was that Mellors could talk both like a refined, intellectual gentleman and with the common dialect of the region. I thought that was interesting way to sort of bridge some of the gap of  classes between him and Connie.

Class differences is definitely an important topic in Lady Chatterley's Lover. Many characters were not shocked to find out that Connie had taken a lover, but they were shocked or upset when they found out that was the gamekeeper instead of a nobleman. Connie's sister is particularly upset with this news, although it does not stop her from allowing Connie to see him.

One of the aspects of Lady Chatterley's Lover that I liked most was Lawrence's notion of the importance of both the mind and the body in creating a fully functional and fulfilled person. Lawrence believes that you can't live well through just the mind (such as Clifford) or the body (such as Bertha Coutts, Mellors estranged wife). Through Connie's sexual reawakening, we see that she becomes a more fully developed person because she fills the needs of both her mind and her body.

Overall, I enjoyed Lady Chatterley's Lover. I thought it was fairly easy to read with some interesting, apparent themes. The history behind the publication/banning of the book is also interesting to learn. I didn't love this book though, I think the characters were still a little too distant for me.

ReadALong: Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence: Post 1

I am participating in A Literary Odyssey's readalong of Lady Chatterley's Lover. I have never read a book by D.H. Lawrence but I did know that this book was controversional because it was banned when it was first published for its explicit dealings of a sexual nature.

So far we have read the first half of the book (the first ten chapters) and I can see why this book was banned in its time. While the sex scenes are tame by today's standards, the narration includes not only sex scenes but also characters discussing sex and the nature of personal relationships between men and women.

Lady Chatterley's Lover follows two main characters, Clifford and Connie Chatterley. Clifford was injured, shortly after his marriage to Connie, in WWI which left him paralysed from the waist down- creating a sexless marriage for him and Connie when he returned home. For many years, Connie was content to be Clifford's caretaker and asked nothing of him in return. After several years, Connie slowly drifts into a depression from a lack of entertainment and, we assume, sex and intimate relations. Connie takes one lover who is part of Clifford's social circle, but she ends up taking another lover who she feels more deeply about- the caretaker of their estate! A man below her rank!

For a classic novel, I think that it is a fairly easy read and moves along at a nice pace. What I'm not thrilled about are the characters. Through the beginning they all seemed rather distant and cold. It's hard to relate to characters who value their intellect above everything else. Clifford's friends sit around 'intellectualizing' sex by examining relationships between men and women. Their discussions are very frank, which I found a little uncomfortable because it was not stuff I would sit around talking about with group of people. They also downplay the intimacy and importance of marriage and sex:

"I believe that sex is a sort of communication like speech, and should be as free as speech. Let any woman start a sexual conversation with me, and it's natural for me to go to bed with her, to finish it"

"'Marriage might-and would-stultify my mental processes. [...] I'd be ashamed to see a woman walking round with my name-label on her, address and railway station, like a wardrobe trunk' [...] 'It's an amusing idea, Charlies,' said Dukes, 'that sex is just another form of talk, where you act the words instead of saying them. I suppose it's quite true. I suppose we might exchange as an sensations and emotions with women as we do ideas about eh weather and so on. Sex might be a sort of normal physical conversation between a man and a women.'"

Connie's lover, the gardener, is also a distant man who seems to like Connie just for her body-- which I suppose is the opposite of her husband and his friends who just admire her mind. I hope we learn more about him in the second half of the book.

I think one of the main themes in this book is the split nature that humans have created. Connie is split in two by the men around her- she is admired for intellect by her husband and for her body by her lover. Connie struggles with this though because she wants to be one, whole person. I hope she succeeds in integrating herself and regaining her happiness.