At the risk of getting hate mail from the rabid fans of this book--I was underwhelmed. A myriad of problems in this book (and I'm not talking about the theology, people have a right to their opinion) but it would be ALMOST palatable if the foreword was removed. Painfully manipulative. If my sister hadn't recommended this book, I would have stopped right there, but I finished it and I'll never read a book I can't respect again, for anyone. Amen!
Friday, August 21, 2009
The Shack by William P. Young
At the risk of getting hate mail from the rabid fans of this book--I was underwhelmed. A myriad of problems in this book (and I'm not talking about the theology, people have a right to their opinion) but it would be ALMOST palatable if the foreword was removed. Painfully manipulative. If my sister hadn't recommended this book, I would have stopped right there, but I finished it and I'll never read a book I can't respect again, for anyone. Amen!
Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson
Synopsis: A female artist writes about her life as the last person on earth.Reasons why I stopped reading this book halfway through (and then skipped to the end.)
1.Interesting ideas, which is essential for me as a reader, but the language style was tedious. Even an intentional tedium is still tedious.
2. Male author speaking as a female. This often works, however the way the narrator speaks about her menstruation sounded like a man trying to sound like a woman and that "willing suspension of disbelief" got suspended right there.
3. Also halfway, I realized the narrator sounded exactly like me and I spend enough time in my own head; I want some relief.
4. It would have been nice if some resolution or growth occurred somewhere--I guess I'm a traditionalist after all.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Proust was a Neuroscientist
Actually about Proust as well as Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Paul Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein and Auguste Escoffier and how all of these artists of word, paint, and music anticipated the discoveries of neuroscience. Engaging, witty, clearly written, and every page a wealth of new fascinating tidbits of knowledge; this book would be the ideal text for any classroom of humanists trying to grasp the appeal of science and science students overlooking the contributions of the arts to the world of science. Ultimately, an appeal for a closer association and understanding between art and science.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
On Truth by Harry Frankfurt
Pros:
- Shiny gold cover.
- It's small. 4 1/8 inches wide by 6 1/4 inches tall.
- It's short. A mere 101 pages with an average column width of 2 1/2 inches.
- The first two sentences on page 49 contain: two i.e.(s) , the word truth in quotes, another word in italics, three dashes and then a quoted word again this time within a parentheses.
- No pictures.
- I'm a cretin.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
The inherent dangers of first person. 
A little under a quarter of the way into the novel, there is a scene recalled by the first person narrator that is both poignant and horrific. Out of sight of the boy and his mother, the narrator's father alone in his study is burning the boy's paintings.
"There's a smell of burning around the house," I remarked.
"Burning?" My mother was silent for a while, then she said: "No, I don't think so. It must be your imagination, Masuji."
"I smelt burning," I said. "There, I just caught it again. Is Father still in the reception room?"
"Yes, He's working on something."
"Whatever he's doing in there," I said, "it doesn't bother me in the least."
From that scene, the force of the novel springs, but as a narrator relating his own story the deliberate inclusion of that scene comes across as an obvious ploy to elicit sympathy, a psychological tool or weapon wielded by the narrator to justify his every action and every mistake.
This in itself is not a flaw.
However, unwilling or unable to confront his pain, his artist's soul fatally wounded, the main character suppresses his feelings from that moment on. The adult narrator that relates the rest of the novel has removed himself from his own life and since this is told in the first person, the reader also ends up stuck in this frozen sterile limbo. The narrator is indeed drifting in a floating world finding pride only in pleasing the father replacement in his life, the patriarchal imperialistic regime. Nothing else matters to him and so recounting the story from first person it is difficult to convey anything beyond his narrow and damaged vision.
As readers, we are never allowed to witness any of the art he created, not the works destroyed and not the problematic political art he hangs his reputation on later. If he learns, grows, changes or even fails to change, he can barely express it. Ultimately and regretfully, I could not care about his journey and thus for me the novel was a failure.
A little under a quarter of the way into the novel, there is a scene recalled by the first person narrator that is both poignant and horrific. Out of sight of the boy and his mother, the narrator's father alone in his study is burning the boy's paintings.
"There's a smell of burning around the house," I remarked.
"Burning?" My mother was silent for a while, then she said: "No, I don't think so. It must be your imagination, Masuji."
"I smelt burning," I said. "There, I just caught it again. Is Father still in the reception room?"
"Yes, He's working on something."
"Whatever he's doing in there," I said, "it doesn't bother me in the least."
From that scene, the force of the novel springs, but as a narrator relating his own story the deliberate inclusion of that scene comes across as an obvious ploy to elicit sympathy, a psychological tool or weapon wielded by the narrator to justify his every action and every mistake.
This in itself is not a flaw.
However, unwilling or unable to confront his pain, his artist's soul fatally wounded, the main character suppresses his feelings from that moment on. The adult narrator that relates the rest of the novel has removed himself from his own life and since this is told in the first person, the reader also ends up stuck in this frozen sterile limbo. The narrator is indeed drifting in a floating world finding pride only in pleasing the father replacement in his life, the patriarchal imperialistic regime. Nothing else matters to him and so recounting the story from first person it is difficult to convey anything beyond his narrow and damaged vision.
As readers, we are never allowed to witness any of the art he created, not the works destroyed and not the problematic political art he hangs his reputation on later. If he learns, grows, changes or even fails to change, he can barely express it. Ultimately and regretfully, I could not care about his journey and thus for me the novel was a failure.
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