Cosmopolis

Weird!

Persuasion

Persuasion was harder to get into than Sense and Sensibility, but definitely worth the additional effort. The first few chapters deal entirely with Sir Walter Elliot and his eldest daughter Elizabeth, and they are both horrible, annoying people. I was really quite concerned that Austen's focus on the ridiculousness of societal stratification would weed me interest right out of the reading. However, she eventually in the third or fourth chapter begins to focus on Anne, who is a delightful, if slightly confusing, character.

When I was about halfway through Persuasion, I asked a colleague in the lounge (she looked like a Jane Austen fan) if she had read it. I was right; she was a Jane Austen fan, and Persuasion was perhaps her favorite of Austen's works. I was curious about this because Pride and Prejudice has always been mine, but she pointed out some salient facts. Not the least of which is Anne is twenty-seven. I guess I should have attached myself to that earlier, as I am also twenty-seven, but it sort of slipped through my mind. Also, Anne is a middle child in a family where only the youngest is married. All this is rather unusual for the time period, but it seemed quite normal to me until Ms. Summers pointed it out. She also mentioned that this book was the most autobiographical of Austen's works, and she felt that Austen might have been writing the alternative ending to her life. This is, of course, a simultaneously pleasing and depressing thought. How sad that she lived alone, desiring male company, but how wonderful that she could create a world in which her deepest desires were manifest.

In terms of my unadulterated reaction to the book, I worried about Anne throughout. She seemed to read things into Captain Wentworth's actions that I would never have been so bold as to read there. I guess that's why it always came as a surprise to me when a guy was interested in me, I could never read the signals correctly. Still, I spent a great deal of the novel waiting for Anne's arrogance to be toppled by Wentworth's engagement to someone else. Thankfully, this was not the case, and everything ends up okay at the end. I will give Ms. Austen credit for her creation of another dashing male character. Wentworth is a rival for Darcy, to be sure. :)

Sense and Sensibility

Pride and Prejudice has long been one of my favorite books. As a senior in high school, I read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice. I can imagine it was a torturous reading list for the average seventeen-year-old boy, but I was in heaven. All this dramatic romance tickled me and, in many ways, rekindled my faith that literature could be fun to read. I had always done well in English, but years of Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had left me slightly unwilling to take my required reading to bed with me. The texts I read in my senior year did much to make up for the more depressing things we read.

In any case, I digress. I've always loved Pride and Prejudice, but I think I was too young at the time to be concerned with the relentless societal commentary contained within its pages. The utter ridiculousness of Elinor's and Marianne's positions in Sense and Sensibility blind-sided me. I little expected the heavy sarcasm that dripped from the pages describing the two sisters. Having watched Emma Thompson's film but not read the book, I expected to identify as much with Elinor on the page as I did on the screen. This was definitely not the case. I felt very strongly that Marianne was too emotional and Elinor too sensible to be even slightly realistic. Elinor hides every struggle from her family, while Marianne falls physically ill from her severe depression. Everyone was just a bit over the top. However, I can't help but love the language with a passion that approaches Marianne's devotion to Willoughby. I want to make it very clear that none of the these things I have mentioned is a criticism of Austen, only of myself. I found the book delightful, and though I don't think I can approach it with the same naivete that I approached Pride and Prejudice the first time, it was still an engrossing and enlightening read.

The only thing I missed about this story was an engaging male lead. None of the men approach Mr. Darcy in all his dashing glory. Willoughby is obviously the counterpoint to Wickham and was even slightly more sinister, but neither Edward Ferrars nor Colonel Brandon seemed to be the combination of fabulous qualities that Darcy was. While Marianne ends up very well off, Elinor is basically living as a servant on her sister's grounds. I honestly can't remember what happens to Jane by the end of Pride and Prejudice, but I'm sure that she doesn't end up married to Darcy's employee. Still, the girls are both happy, as is their mother. It was a pleasant ending, beautifully written. I heartily wish this was the case more often with our "literary fiction."

On the Road

A year and a month ago I took off for Savannah, Georgia with two really fabulous people. I didn't really want to go. I didn't have my same sense of adventure at the time that I have now. I had been plotting all week about how to get out of it. I would be leaving my two children with my mom and my sister for three nights and four days. I was fairly recently separated, and I just wasn't in the mood for fun. But for all that, I think I shall never have a similar experience again. I was so shocked to have such an amazing time. Every moment there was new in a way that can probably never be repeated. And 100% honestly I did nothing illegal or even immoral (in my twisted sense of morality anyway) while I was there. No drugs (just a lot of alcohol) and no sex.

In any case, that trip birthed what we now call "the burning roman candle club." It was named a few weeks later by one of our number for the lines in Jack Kerouac's On the Road:

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" (Kerouac 5-6).

Of course we came back from Savannah and dived right back into our normal (or not so normal) lives as graduate students at ASU. I had comprehensive exams to study for and a thesis to write. Kevin was bumming around Boone, much the same way he is now; although, I hear he's quit drinking, and Elitza was busy teaching and studying much the same as I was. My life would never be quite the same, and that was mostly because I decided I deserved a little fun before I got old. But I promised myself I would eventually read the book from which these lines came. And so I have, just tonight.

Amusingly enough, my friend Kamy told me that these lines are immensely popular among the ladies. "They ALL have them on their facebook pages," he tells me. It really doesn't surprise me. The only thing that's unique about any of us is that we are all unique, I suppose. Except when you're reading a book like this where all the characters are both unique and amoral. I say that with the highest sense of regard for Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.

There isn't much of a plotline in this book, but more ground is covered than in say, Catcher in the Rye. Still, basically Sal hears about a guy named Dean. They meet up when Dean comes to New York with Mary Lou, his first wife. They become good friends and the rest of the novel is the story of Sal and Dean travelling around together and some separately. They go from New York to Denver to San Francisco, back to New York and even to Mexico. Dean is a completely free spirit, and it's hard not to like him, even though by the end of the book he is a virtual pariah in his social group because he leaves impregnated women behind everywhere he goes. He seems to care for people deeply but is too lost in his own little world to take on any responsibility at all. He takes three wives in the book, and he ends up with the second one. He becomes unreasonably angry with the first because she ends up sleeping with a number of other men. I can't imagine why that bothers him, but I guess he feels like these women are really his property once he has them.

Sal, who is a much easier character to get along with, supports Dean until the end, even after being left in Mexico extremely sick. Sal eventually "settles down" in New York, with what he considers a perfect woman for him.

I have seriously mixed reactions to this book. Part of me is soooo jealous that I wasn't born a man or at least hadn't kept myself unburdened long enough to behave like these men did for a while. But, another part of me feels like there is a (yuck) moral in there somewhere about burning the candle at both ends. Their life isn't sustainable. And Dean's biggest problem is that he keeps it up too long. I can totally see why this would be a guy's favorite book though. There is a great freedom in the way the guys behave, and somehow I feel like it should be some people's right. I don't judge Dean as harshly as say Galatea does, but I still feel like his woes were the reasonable consequence for his actions. He lived life hard, which would have been fine, if he could have left women out of it. But once you swear undying love, take marriage vows, and impregnate someone, you're kinda responsible for them. It's a sad truth, and the acceptance of the sad truth is the tragedy of Dean's life. Sal, on the other hand, either does not know who he impregnated along the path or did not actually impregnate anyone, so he escapes the majority of the censure that is heaped upon Dean.

Somehow, though, the whole book feels like an elegy for the way Dean lived his life, as if in some alternate universe it really should have been okay with everyone. And even though Sal settles down in the end, it doesn't feel like some great giving in to societal expectation but rather a rest after a hell of a roller coaster ride. I enjoyed reading this book though. There was relatively no conflict through most of it, but it was really an interesting read, especially for someone trying to understand the male mind.

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is one of those books that sits on your shelf and whenever you told people, "I've never read it," they looked at you with this shocked look, and ask, "Are you really an English major?" So, I caught up with Salinger, and I read The Catcher in the Rye. It was really quite interesting.

When I brought the list of the 100 Best Novels from the Modern Library down to our work room, several of the teachers made the comment that they love J.D. Salinger, but hate Holden Caulfield. They called him "whiny" and "irritating." I do hate ever so much to disagree with my colleagues (they really are excellent people), but I really kinda liked Holden. I felt terribly sorry for him, but I liked him alright. I have to admit that he was overprivileged and spoiled, but he seemed to genuinely dislike cruelty in all its manifestations, and I do too!

My boyfriend is writing his master's thesis on this really depressing film maker and how his films reflect 20th and 21st century masculinity, and I couldn't help but think of all the things he's writing about when I was reading this book. I keep arguing that while the original ideas of what makes a man masculine are really abhorrent and there have been a lot of negative effects on the concept of masculinity because of femininism, there are some genuine positive aspects of the modern man. Holden struggles against a lot of the societal expectations of manhood. The thought of being a "phony" drives him mad, and he would much rather be poor than have to pretend to be something that he's not. Unfortunately, his disgust with the world extends to his academic diligence, and he has failed out of numerous schools in the last few years. He's sixteen, but he's not on his way to graduate any time soon.

The basic plot is ridiculously simple. Holden's been kicked out of Pencey and is to return home when winter break starts on Wednesday. He begins his tale on Saturday night, when he goes to see his professor, fights with his roomates, and leaves the school early on a train. He goes to New York, and he stays in a hotel; he calls up a girl named Sally and takes her to a show. He gets too drunk Sunday night and returns to his old English teacher's house, but not before he visits his sister Phoebe at his parents' place. On Monday, he decides he's going to run away from home, tries to say goodbye to his sister, and when she insists on accompanying him, he changes his mind and goes home. There is no climax or heroic journey: just Holden telling us about a couple of days last winter. But he really does tell us a lot.

One of the reasons I wanted to read this book is because when I worked in the UWC (University Writing Center) last year, one of my clients had written a paper on it for an English course. I'll never forget how she really made me like Holden, even before I had read about him. She kept talking about how he was with the nuns and his thoughts about Jane Gallagher. He really was a sensitive and caring guy, and if any of that was valued by his culture, he might have been alright.

Holden is exactly the kind of guy I wish I could have made friends with when I was younger. He's very intelligent and probably just needs someone fairly intelligent to fawn over him. I was exactly that kind of girl. I always thought I could change somebody's life by making them see their own worth. Anyway, it never worked, but I really do feel bad for Holden.