Notes on books and various other written media I have read lately

The Plague by Albert Camus

The Plague is about a plague that strikes the town of Port Oran in Algeria. It describes the behaviour of the populace and of several specific characters over the course of the plague. It's existentialist and emphasises the inevitability of life and our inability to control our own destinies (I wrote a major essay on a similar theme about Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn, so it's a topic of which I am rather fond).

Something I spend quite a lot of time thinking about is the relationship between style and the quality of a book. The Plague was very interesting in terms of style. It was narrated by someone who calls themselves 'the narrator', and we find out only at the end that 'the narrator' is actually Rieux, the main character. This gives it a really detached air. Yet it still manages to describe the events with the utmost compassion. Some parts were very moving. The prose is bare and unadorned, yet still beautiful. It's like those European trees in winter, stark and black against the white sky. Those trees are beautiful enough to make me want to live in Europe. But it's interesting that such objective prose can be so emotive. I used to think that beauty came from the use of intricate metaphor and imagery and stylistic techniques, but I've started to change my tune, and reading The Plague only confirmed this for me.

Harper's Bazaar

Has incredibly boring articles. A friend lent a few magazines to me in an attempt to convert me to fashion. The fashion was pretty, but the articles...... there was one about models being too thin, and I suppose it was always a hard ask to expect someone to come up with an original article on such a hackneyed topic, but I mean, really. It just went round and round and round, going over the exact same things, not even attempting to assert an opinion or make a statement. Euhhhhh. The other articles were similarly boring, because really, who wants to read about Katie Holmes or 'your definition of luxury'? I skipped most of them and looked at the pictures, like a little kid.

Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau

I have been wanting to read this book for aaaaaaages, because it has a fantastic concept. Queneau wrote about an inconsequential meeting on a bus and a short conversation about a button. The story has no point, which is the point in itself. It's just a vehicle for the exercises in style. He writes the about the same sequence of events in 99 different styles, from haiku to sonnet. I was kind of waiting for it to tell me something profound about style (which I'm so into right now) and it kind of did, but not how I expected it to. More than anything, though, it's funny. I especially laughed at the opera one. It must have been the most enjoyable thing to translate (originally written in French). I might write something more profound about it later, but at the moment I'm feeling like my brain is leaking out of my ears.

Phosphore

I don't know if there's any point me writing about this. Basically, it's a French magazine for teenagers about... stuff. I'm reading it to improve my French, and it seems pretty good to me. It seems to lack the slightly patronising attitude magazines for this age group often have, but I have doubts that my French is good enough that I could pick it up, anyway. With French, I never have any trouble understanding anything, but I can't pick up tone or more subtle things like that. I should read more in French. Basically, I only mention this to remind myself to write sometime about the differences in reading in different languages, because it's pretty interesting.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I have heard so much about Neil Gaiman that when my friend sent me a link to an e-book of American Gods I started reading it straight away. So far, though, it's rather dull. It's intriguing, but in the way a thriller is intriguing, i.e., boringly. It's written like a thriller but with less action and I like it not. I'm just waiting for something decent to happen. I am not reassured about the tastes of the human race.

In other news, I gave my Dad Cat's Eye to read and HE LOVES IT. Interestingly, he seemed much more affected by it than I was. He said he was crying his eyes out as he read it on the plane. Which is odd, or maybe I am just cold-hearted. But I love discussing it with him, and contrary to my expectations, he still made me think of new things about the book. I thought that he wouldn't have assimilated it enough after the first reading to be able to discuss it properly (only because I wasn't able to after my first reading, but maybe I'm just dumb) but he made me think - maybe the reason I like it so much is because I can identify with Elaine's isolation in primary school. That's why it made him so sad - it reminded him of his own misery in primary school. Except it's not really misery, because as we were saying, kids have such limited experience that they just accept all this bad stuff that's happening to them as normal, natural, the way of life. I certainly did, Dad did, Elaine did. She captures perfectly the exquisite loneliness and unhappiness of those days, except that you're not really lonely or unhappy because you never take a step back to evaluate it objectively. Or you're not able to take that step back, either way. So go Dad for being smart and cool.

This is why I love reading so much; there is always more to find in even the most shallow of books. This is basically the only reason I liked Harry Potter so much; for the only time ever (probably in all of history) there was this book that almost everyone had read, and almost everyone was happy to talk about it and discuss it. It made me very happy. In terms of booktalk, the week before the last HP book emerged was the best in my life.

Impervious scintillation of the thirteen

My muse has been too tired/busy to write for the past few days. I'm thinking that now probably wasn't the best time to start a new blog that I want to update regularly. No matter! Today, kids, we're going to be talking about Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, because I can't get over how amazing it is.

I believe a chronological explanation is in order: I first read this book at the end of 2005. I found it mired in depression, in such a way that it weighed me down, though it was otherwise quite fine. I usually love depressing books, but this one seemed to sit heavily in the pit of my stomach and it wouldn't go away. As it was, I had to study it for an exam, so I read it again a few months later. I loved it. I have heard similar stories from other people, so if you've read it once and didn't like it, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE GIVE IT ANOTHER CHANCE.

All up, now, I have read it almost five times and it is quite unique. I read it slowly, revelling - no, wallowing - in the voluptuous beauty of the language, savouring every tiny detail. It has got to be the sole book I read only for the aesthetic qualities of the language.

It's also quite clever. There are metaphors five layers deep, and a cyclical structure that is not only symbolic, but ingenious. And did I mention that it's beautiful? I don't think I did, I'll just have to say it again. IT'S BEAUTIFUL.

It's also thought-provoking, and I quote:

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also... I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing.

This theme of time as a dimension, introduced on the first page, no less, permeates the entire book and is mirrored beautifully in a number of metaphoric ways. It's certainly an interesting idea, no? It's mixed up with all of the most interesting parts of physics, the parts that can be understood at a shallow level without all the maths and stuff. Like walking through walls and travelling in time.

Not so long ago, I read a quote about literature that struck me as being deeply profound. I'll have to paraphrase it, because for some unfathomable reason I didn't write it down, but it was something along the lines of "the greatest thing about literature is seeing in print an idea you had thought was yours only". Ever experienced that weird, almost deja vu-like feeling when you read something that perfectly encapsulates something you believe? I experience it on a daily basis. I have a notebook in which I write these down, so as to preserve their universality (or so I like to think about it) in an easily-accessible place.

The reason I mention this is because there are a few of these in Cat's Eye. It's important to realise that these soul-touching quotes are going to be different for everyone, but the one that really stood out for me was this (again paraphrased): "little girls are small and cute only to grown-ups. To each other they are life sized." Something about this dully stated truth chills me to the core, though perhaps it is only in the context of the book that I understand it.

Here are some more amazing quotes:

"We’re impervious, we scintillate, we are thirteen..." has a better description of teenagehood ever been written? I Think Not.

Actually, I can't be bothered finding more quotes. Just read the damn thing. Read it and weep, weep for the beauty, the beauty of tragedy. Weep for the salvation of the human race, in the eternal form of Cat's Eye.