11.11.2009
1952 Review of The Invisible Man
Book of the Times
10.29.2009
Reviews from the back of my 1972 copy of Invisible Man
"The most impressive work of fiction by an American Negro which I have ever read... Mr. Ellison is a finished novelist who uses words with great skill, who writes with poetic intensity and immense narrative drive... Invisible Man is tough, brutal and sensational... it blazes with authentic talent." ~Orville Prescott
"Ellison has talent and so far he has managed to stay away from being first a Negro, he is still first a writer. I think he will go far." ~William Faulkner
"A resolutely honest, tormented, profoundly American book... Invisible Man belongs on the shelf with the classical efforts man has made to chart the river Lethe from its mouth to its sources." ~Wright Morris
"...a searing and exalted record of a Negro's journey through contemporary America in search of success, companionship, and finally, himself." ~Irving Howe
9.16.2009
NY Times review of Tropic of Cancer
7.31.2009
The Death of Gogol
Nikolai Gogol, the strangest prose-poet Russia ever produced, died Thursday morning, a little before eight, on the fourth of March, eighteen fifty-two, in Moscow. He was almost forty-three years old - a reasonably ripe age for him, considering the ridiculously short span of life generally allotted to other great Russian writers of his miraculous generation. Absolute bodily exhaustion in result of a private hunger strike (by means of which his morbid melancholy had tried to counter the Devil) culminated in acute anemia of the brain (together, probably, with gastro-enteritis through inanition)- and the treatment he was subjected to, a vigorous purging and blood-letting, hastened the death of an organism already gravely impaired by the after effects of malaria and malnutrition. The couple of diabolically energetic physicians who insisted on treating him as if he were an average Bedlamite, much to the alarm of their more intelligent but less active colleagues, intended to break the back of their patient's insanity before attempting to patch up whatever bodily health he still had left. Some fifteen years before, Pushkin, with a bullet in his entrails, had been given medical assistance good for a constipated child. Second rate German and French general practitioners still dominated the scene, for the splendid school of great Russian physicians was yet in the making.
The learned doctors crowding around the Malade Imaginaire with their dog-Latin and gigantic belly pumps cease to be funny when Moliere suddenly coughs out his life-blood on the turbulent stage. It is horrible to read of the grotesquely rough handling that Gogol's poor limp body underwent when all he asked for was to be left in peace. With as fine a misjudgment of symptoms, as a clear anticipation of the methods of Charcot, Dr. Auvers (or Hovert) had his patient plunged into a warm bath where his head was soused with cold water after which he was put to bed with half-a-dozen plump leeches affixed to his nose. He had groaned and cried and weakly struggled while his wretched body (you could feel the spine through the stomach) was carried to the deep wooden bath; he shivered as he lay naked in bed and kept pleading to have the leeches removed: they were dangling from his nose and getting into his mouth (Lift them, keep them away, - he pleaded) and he tried to sweep them off so that his hands had to be held by stout Auvert's (or Hauvers's) hefty assistant.
The Devil he's countering, of course, is his homosexuality, though Nabokov was too polite to say and this wasn't openly discussed by scholars in the English speaking world until the time of Simon Karlinsky's The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol (originally panned in the New York Review of Books in 1977 as wishful thinking on Karlinsky's part).
7.07.2009
NY Times Kokoro Review
7.06.2009
Japanese Meiji Period
I am sure that everyone else has stumbled on the same information that I have but I thought that it would be nice to put it out there. It might help to understand the conditions that the characters are working within.
6.17.2009
A Monarchist Marxists Could Love
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/23/bookend/bookend.html?scp=9&sq=balzac%20goriot&st=cse
Quote from "Word of the Day"
"Society is composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners." -Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (1741-1794)
6.11.2009
Finished with Goriot
5.08.2009
Lee Thoughts
But I digress. What do all you literate folks think about the Lee character? Do you think he's a break with the stereotypes of Chinese-Americans of the past, or do you think he perpetuates them? What do you make of his relationship with Adam Trask? With Abra?
4.27.2009
My question about young Cathy
Genesis
1Adam knew his wife Eve intimately, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain. She said, "I have had a male child with the LORD's help."[28] 2Then she also gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel became a shepherd of a flock, but Cain cultivated the land. 3In the course of time Cain presented some of the land's produce as an offering to the LORD. 4And Abel also presented [an offering][29] — some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions.[30] The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5but He did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he was downcast.[31] 6Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you furious? And why are you downcast?[32] 7If you do right, won't you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it." 8Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field."[33] And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
– Genesis 4:1-8
I gather that this story is meant to recounted in East of Eden through Adam Trask's sons (although I haven't gotten that far yet). However it seems to also apply on some level to Adam and his brother as well. There actually seem to be many parallels to various Genesis stories. The ones I have noticed so far have to do with both brotherhood and the father son relationship. In particular the rivalry between Jacob and Esau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob) as reflected in Adam and Charles. Also the sacrifice of Isaac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac) which is paralleled by Adam's relationship with his father.
Something that interests me is the notion of both Charles and Cathy as being scared or marked. I think this is supposed to tie in to the notion of the "mark of Cain" although I am not quite sure how all the pieces fit together as the mark of Cain is apparently controversial. The following is the bible excerpt (with interjections) from Wikipedia about the source of the mark or curse of Cain. More info can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_Of_Cain
"What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." (Gen. 4:10–12)[2]
When Cain complained that the curse was too strong, and that anyone who found him would kill him, God responded,
"Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over",[3] and God "set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him" (Gen. 4:15).
Hopefully that is helpful. Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of all of Genesis, but it seemed a bit long to post here, so if you are interested check it out, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis.
I think this might be best for discussion once we all finish but one of the questions I have been trying to keep in mind while reading is why Steinbeck feels that it is important to re-tell this commonly known story. What lesson or value dose he feel he is imparting to his reader by telling this story?
Before I ask a question I would like to know where everyone is
4.23.2009
Character Development in E of E
Personally I've noticed that the characters in this book are incredibly well-developed (at least their internal features), which has been interesting.