livrelover

I've been so absolutely insanely busy with school my free-reading time has diminished and i am still plodding away at Anna Karenina.  However, i feel a deep reading-for-pleasure lust growing inside me and i just may go crazy and over the winter break read something not school related.  Oh, and Anna Karenina is wonderful and deliciously entertaining but. . . i want to feel the joy of finishing.  Soon, yes, soon.

I read Steinbeck's novella The Pearl.  It dealt with the nastiness of human nature and how people never seen to know when is the right time to stop.  Yes, people are self destructive maniacs.

I was playing a dice game recently and i found that i was constantly pressing my luck and as a result usually wound up with no points at all instead of settling.  It made me think of the pearl in that sense,  Other than that there isn't much that i feel like saying concerning the story.  It was small and fine.

William Saroyan's Fresno Stories is one of those little compilation books of "the most charming" of Saroyan's short stories.  Usually i stay away from compilations (of books, albums--who is to say what the best is?) but it was only eight bucks, and i loved it. They are all written from the perspective of a young boy--the narrator.  What i like so much about his writing is that although much of it has to do with family and growing up armenian in america, it is also more specifically about the those relationships, family dichotomy, and just growing up anywhere.

It reminded me of a conversation i had with kirsten about chic lit (and dick lit as she so fondly refers to it) and how there is seemingly a generation of writers who are only affective towards their own gender, and how a good amount of literature it seems is viable exclusively by and for men or women but isn't universally relateable.  Although Saroyan's stories are written from the perspective of a boy, and the content is often male oriented (cars) there is nothing unrelateable about it because it has to do not with gender itself, and the importance of gender towards relationships, but about relationships themselves and doesn't make gender and how it shapes perspective the prime (or sole) factor.

There was a young man from Stamboul,
Who soliloquized thus to his tool:
"You took all my wealth
And you ruined my health,
And now you wont pee, you old fool."

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five follows Billy Pilgrim through his sporadic time traveling life, which centers on the World War II Dresdon Fire Bombing.  While this is an anti war book ( "You know what I say to people when i hear they're writing anti-war books?. . . I say, 'why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'") Kurt vonnegut has no pretensions as a writer, making it, well, a goddamn enjoyable read! Sad, smart, Darkly comic Slaughterhouse-five, well,it is difficult for me to discribe, but in comparison with many writers who consider their writing to be "literature" you just know that vonnegut doesn't give a rats ass, he writes because it is good and doesn't worry about being taken too seriously, but hey, sometimes the most sincere and honest way to present life is to make fun of it!

Or maybe i'm just full of shit and the book is what it is.

I've begun reading James Joyce's A Portrait of the Author as a Young Man and find myself enthralled by the stream of consciouseness.  I've always been partial to it and i've enjoyed everything else i've read of his --- The Dubliners, and variouse short stories. (i'm working my way up to Ulyssies.)  I think that i am becoming increasingly fond of books which take place in the mental space of it's characters.  This book can be a little confusing in it's references which are primarily political but i've been using the little index in the back to figure out things like "who is Parnell?" and that really makes the whole thing much more cohesive.  But so far i think that it is lovely. (although i wouldn't usually describe his style as such, it isn't flowery, maybe handsome would be more apt.)

All right, today is my first entry and this is something like my fourth attempt to write it (it keeps getting erased!!) but i have finished reading Divisidero by Michael Ondaatje, a book about a momentous event in the lives of it's three protagonists and how it shapes them as adults.  It is also about the past and the way our thought processes build upon it in the present, the interconnectedness of memory and of their lives in general.  The narration goes back and forth between first person between the protagonist, and third person which is interesting because much of this book seems to be through the mental lives and processes of the characters, even though the acctual events taking place are so interesting. The thing that really struck me though, is Ondaatje's beautiful, almost lucid style which reinforces the themes and content of the story.  After i finished i was so impacted that i had to reach out and i wrote to Kirsten: 

I'm finished with the book. I held back tears as I sat drinking tea and now I feel empty. With the pages I can feel so clearly, I am receptive within my mental life but reality seems blunt and ironically so much less REAL. 

WARNING: THIS NOTE REVEALS INFORMATION ABOUT THE END OF THE BOOK

Another thing about Divisidero was that Ondaatje didn't finish the lives of the characters.  like real people, you don't know what happends because it ends in the thoughts of the main character so if they die, if they fall in love, (if they regain their memory), you don't know and i guess the beauty is it doesn't really matter because it isn't really about what is going to happen, but what did--and how that will never change.