The care and the business of women

With all my talk of imaginative fiction and my modern book choices, it may come as a surprise to you that my next choice of literature was Aristophanes's Lysistrata. As background, I became obsessed last year with finding a really good list of essential literature. While the Great Books of the Western World list isn't modern or very diverse (there's no Asian or Latin American literature, for one thing), it's a good start, and it's full of philosophers and playwrights and mathematicians that I want to read up on. Aristophanes among them.

I've already read Aristophanes's The Clouds, which was a really good satire of philosophy and education in Greek culture. This book is no less insightful or amusing, though it's hurt somewhat by the 1950's translation. (I read a 1990's translation of The Clouds, in the Great Books' 2nd Edition.) The translator tries to get the feel of the piece by putting everything into the proper rhythm and rhyme scheme. It feels pretty good reading it, but I'm picking up a lot less information because of the obscure word choices, and a lack of footnotes on who some of these deities are.

Ahem. I can only criticize this so much because it's so interesting. (Focusing less on the language lets me focus more on the ideas, anyway.) I can see this as a pretty epic musical, though I don't know if this would be accompanied by music in the ancient days. In terms of actual content? Lysistrata is a quirky character with a unique idea about peace; the play is staged in one place, so it works well technically (unlike this play version of Narnia I'm reading, which has something like four elaborate scene changes); and the ending is classic Greek comedy. (Good raunchy bits, too, despite the abstinence.) Oh, might I mention one thing? Aristophanes has no qualms with changing history in fiction. I can't understand why modern storytellers have issues with this -- they always want to return the world to its status quo. What is fantasy for if not to change the world? Sorry, but kill historical accuracy: Valkyrie would have been so much better if they made a new ending.

On sequels

Somewhere, there's an alternate reality where I really enjoy The Underwood See. It completely lives up to the first two in the series (A Crack in the Line, Small Eternities), while tying up all loose ends and still managing to remain elegant. This is not that universe.

I had really high hopes going into The Underwood See, and that should have been my first warning sign. I've already established in this blog that sequels have a very hard time living up to their predecessors, because the original was so... original. The only reason I expected great things from The Underwood See is because the trilogy's first sequel, Small Eternities, was such a surprise. It was really hard to live up to A Crack in the Line, a brilliantly realistic and imaginative science-fiction novel about parallel universes, but live up it did, and Small Eternities was every bit as impressive and elegant as its predecessor.

Why, when an author has a formula that works, does he choose to walk away from it? All right, all right -- the out-there science-fiction nature of this trilogy (billed as three parts of one book -- in the biz we call it the Lord of the Rings strategy) required that someone explain everything by the end. But not to this degree, and not with this amount of extraneous information and dialogue. I mean, this book just drags on and on!

For the uninitiated, Michael Lawrence's Withern Rise Trilogy (sometimes called The Aldous Lexicon, and comprised of A Crack in the Line, Small Eternities, and The Underwood See) is about a teenager named Alaric, who stumbles into another reality one day to find a girl named Naia living his life -- but plus a mother. The idea behind the title is that Alaric's mother died months ago in a freak train accident, but in Naia's reality, she lived. The first book is about the two trying to figure out the nature of their realities; the second introduces more characters and another layer to the science (fiction). Both books have a lot of philosophical wheel-spinning and not much plot: this is very much a story about situation. Each book also has an ending that is as shocking as it is elegant.

I can't say, as I did with Jasper Fforde, that Michael Lawrence was running out of ideas for this book, because there are certainly plenty of new elements. Several new realities include one interesting overgrown forest (much in the vein of C.S. Lewis's first Narnia book), and much of the ending was clearly foreshadowed in other books. But there are just as many elements that are unnecessarily re-used: Aldous's character becomes tedious instead of mysterious, and the new primary Alaric is ripped from a gimmick from the first book that should have remained a gimmick.

The problem with this book really isn't the ideas, though. The series is just getting tired. One reason for this might be that there's actual plot in this one. It's subtle: there's the subplot in the forest, there's subplots of various characters all looking for each other -- but there is rarely a time when the characters have nothing to do, which was actually a plus in previous books when they characters could sit and think. This instead is replaced with petty details from history, and flowery description of locations.

Also, Lawrence has to do some backpedaling to reverse some effects of the previous book, having killed off a major character. He introduces many new versions of Alaric instead, but doesn't spend enough time developing any of them, and so Naia is much more interesting than Alaric. Since this Alaric should have gone through the events of book 1, it's surprising that he's not more interesting, but Lawrence simply doesn't spend much time with him. Fortunately, we've gotten used to the new Alaric enough by the end that I'm okay with the ultimate twinning outcome. (This was something I'd subconsciously hoped for since the beginning. It's not every day you get to speak with your alternate-reality mind twin. I always found the conflict between them an interesting dynamic, but couldn't wait for them to get to like each other.)

In the end, the reality-bending ideas are still present, but they're bogged down with too much exposition and description. The few parts that felt just as good as the previous books were those immediately after the storm, in merging two realities. The book feels a bit like my blog posts sometimes do: I plan them out, know all the points I'll make, but the end result is inferior to the way I heard it in my head. In Michael Lawrence's case, this book isn't as fleshed out as it could have been, and certainly not as elegant.

Still, all that said, anyone interested in imaginative fiction should pick up this series, or at least the first two books of it. I've spoiled a good deal of this one, but made an effort not to give away too much of the others because they're so good. And the exposition was kind of necessary for this one, so I'll give this book a little leeway.

Respect the classics, man

With these long breaks between posts, it's extremely apparent that I'm not as well-read as other, faster readers. I try to be constantly reading, but don't finish things quickly. So I hope, then, that my ambiguosity over Cormac McCarthy's The Road is somewhat understandable. Don't get me wrong -- I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but there are some aspects of it that make me uncertain.

Like, where do you draw the line between High Art and Elitism? The direction, style of writing, and eventual end of the book are unlike most I've read. Do I classify that as novel, or as pretentious?

I'll back up and look at the book for what it is. First, it is spectacular. I picked up this book when my English teacher recommended that our class not read it because it's so difficult to read. Needless to say, I considered this to be a challenge. The Road was one of my summer purchases, and here I am reading it now.

Think about what McCarthy has to live up to for a minute. This novel was published in 2006, and now in 2009, America is obsessed with the Apocalypse (as I mentioned in my last post). Not to mention that this is the second Apocalypse novel I've read this year, if you count World War Z. There's a huge canvas of books out there, and whatever McCarthy does, won't it just be another drop in the bucket?

Wrong. McCarthy's novel is nothing short of a masterpiece. By nearly eliminating the questions of why and how from the novel, McCarthy focuses on the journey instead of the destination. There is an uncertain goal, and it is eventually reached, but the characters are never entirely sure what that goal is. The focus is on the destroyed landscape, and on some interesting (though not unique) themes of survival. The interesting dynamic is the parent one -- the father blurs the lines between reality and falsehood, and it's clear by the end that the son does not appreciate it. Yet they have no one else to turn to, and the father's role really is important. If not for him, they would both have died early on.

There are four major things that separate this post-apocalypse novel from the rest. The first, as I've mentioned, is the lack of details of what happened to the planet. This is pretty interesting, as McCarthy leaves it mostly to our imaginations, though I found it irritating that McCarthy began to gives us details but didn't quite tell us what happened.

The second thing is the writing style. Oh, the writing style. There is little punctuation beyond periods and capital letters; run-on sentences and fragments abound; quotation marks are absent; and furthermore, the characters are never named. I've read that this is supposed to reflect the chaotic state of nature into which the people in the story are cast. I certainly see that.

The third thing is the constant progression to the point of monotony. Discovery of places means less as the man and boy plod along because they've seen it before. In any other writer's hands, this would bring monotony to the point of boredom, but McCarthy makes it work in the context of the story, even addressing it.

The last detail that makes this book different is the ending. Spoiler alert, because (as I said), this is a really good book and you should read it. For the rest of us: I found the ending severely lacking. If the man had not been running the whole time, he might have been rescued. (Then again, would he have let himself be rescued? He's bone-headed, sure, but aren't a lot of us?) The boy leaving the road was the worst thing for me. Sure, maybe he deserves to: maybe the last few scenes set up his divinity -- and that's interesting. But upon reaching the end, I realized that I'd wanted either both characters to die or one of them to continue on the road. The road is so much an entity unto itself that I never wanted to leave it. What else is there to live- or read- for?

That last thing made me wonder, at first, if I just didn't "get" it. And so did a lot of the sentence fragments and run-ons in the description, actually. How much of that is surrealism and how much is literary pretentiousness? But no matter. The book is marvelous in itself, and anyone interested in good literature should definitely read it.

(I apologize if this post is less coherent than most. I wanted to get this up because I'm now halfway through my next book. I guess there's hope for me learning to read faster!)

(Also, that blog title made more sense to me when I started this. You'll just have to take my word for it.)

Not summer, not reading, and... what's a Berkeleian anyway?

I've been strict about keeping this blog to reviews of my reading selections only, so far. But with the nullification of one of the words in the title ("Summer"), I suppose it was only a matter of time before another word was nullified: Reading. Because, you see, two different forms of media have caught my attention recently, and I thought it would be interesting to discuss them. So if you're conservative about this sort of thing, consider "Reading" in the context of this blog to be a synonym for "Culture", just as "Summer" is now a synonym for "Pleasure". Anyway, it's just an experiment for now while I finish The Road (which is excellent so far, thank you for asking). The basic spirit behind the blog will stay the same.

I should explain the name "Berkeleian" while I'm at it, though. Two years ago, I took a philosophy course at my high school, and we were assigned to read Sophie's World. The book culminated in a fourth-wall breaking sequence in which the author establishes a quirky book-within-a-book plot, centered around the philosophy of one George Berkeley. This philospher indicated that any knowledge of the world is to be obtained only through direct perception. It follows that we can only further our understanding of our personal perceptions, but will never know the true nature of the world, in an idealized state. (We could be a brain in a jar, or a character in a book, and our consciousness would not allow us to realize it.) I took to this idea immediately -- the idea of altered states of reality, and parallel universes, intrigues me greatly (though I'm staying as far away from drugs as possible). Hence, I've adopted the name as a student of his ideas.

Ahem. Now to the main event. It's been relatively easy for me to avoid discussing films this year. I've felt the cinematic selection to be more boring than ever, and with little time and budget, it's easier for me to rent from Netflix. Still, I've kept up with a few films, like District 9 and Ponyo (both good). Recently, I went to see Shane Ackerman's 9, and was surprised by how much I liked it. After some discussions, though, it's clear that this film has divided audiences -- either they love it, or they hate it. I liked it, so I'm going to defend myself here. I will try not to impose my beliefs too much, but will instead articulate what qualities 9 had that interested me personally.

A quick summary: 9 takes place in a post-apocalyptic future (of all things), in which a war between humans and machines have reduced the Earth to a barren wasteland. (Or at least, one part of the Earth; we never see much beyond one main city.) With this film, we've come to another in a long, long line of post-apocalyptic films. Here are some more: WALL-E, Terminator Salvation, 2012, The Road. Then there's the new Nostradamus Effect series on the History Channel that tests the validity of various doomsday predictions, and there's the Half-Life 2 game I'm currently playing. Clearly, there's an obsession here. I did not have high hopes for 9 because it did not market itself as anything other than another dystopian future movie. The opening scene, in which our doll protagonist 9 discovers the nature of his surroudings, is not inspired or original. Once 9 moves out into the world, though, the film gets more interesting. We meet other characters and beasts. Little details of the world pop out at us - as well they should, considering the detail of the animation at this miniscule level. The world becomes surreal and visionary all at once. It's invigorating.

So, then, here is what I liked about it. The characters are varied and likeable. The ballet-like, quieter scenes work so much more. I think that may partly be because the characters can talk, but choose not to in their exploration of the world. The storytelling -- which is not the same thing as the (some say predictable) plot -- is inspired. I was drawn into this story. Surreal details move from background images to important plot points. Oh, and the vision is amazing. Character and set design look great, especially the little burlap protagonists. Sure, the movie has its faults -- overly dramatic changes in character, action-scene direction that made my head spin. And it's uneven: the previous world is not emphasized as much as, say, WALL-E, and the means by which the humans die is unoriginal. We've seen it in Terminator, I Robot, and others. But I was willing to overlook this because I'd found a movie that did storytelling in a way that I really liked. It's rare that I find a story that tries, and succeeds, to be unpredictable and good. With this and Coraline under its belt, Focus Features is really doing well with animation this year.

My other short note is on the new hosts for At the Movies. I may be the only person I know who watches this show, but I was saddened to hear that Ben and Ben would be departing it. I liked their discussions and agreed with a lot of their points. The new hosts have more experience with newspaper reviews than TV, probably because ABC wanted the show to have more credibility. My viewing experience was that they had more sustained, intelligent commentary on the films, but their discussion was somewhat lacking. They didn't seem like they wanted to disagree with each other -- but that's precisely what movie discussion is! Everyone's going to see something different in a movie, and it's impossible to fight that. I'll give the hosts a few weeks to find their footing in what is obviously an unfamiliar setting for both. And I'll grant that the show still gives you that little pleasure when you discover the name of a really good indie film you'd never heard of before. (This week it was Big Fan. By the way, their reviews of 9 were middling and good, respectively.)

I'm hoping that someone's actually reading this -- if not, fine, I'm mostly writing for myself -- but I invite you to discuss the things I've read, seen, listened to, etc., on this blog. I think this post was pretty successful, so I'll maybe be adding in reviews of video games and music albums. Still, I'll keep the focus mostly on books and story. That's most of what I have time for, anyway.

Blogging: Make it a Hobbit

It just occurred to me that it's September already. Soon I'm going to have to shut down this blog because it won't be the summer anymore. Well, okay, probably I won't. I want to have a place where I can keep talking about books so my friends who don't want to hear me rant don't have to -- but in all likelihood, I won't post that much during the year because I read (on average) one book every one-two months during the year. Not counting school literature.

So, okay, what haven't I talked about? For some reason, I look back and realize that I haven't reviewed Flatland. Which is surprising, because it's the best book I've read all summer. So I'll go ahead and mention it while I still can. If you don't know the premise of Flatland, it follows a two-dimensional shape as he describes his two-dimensional world. He later encounters a one-dimensional world, and then is taken to the dizzying realms of Space (occupying three dimensions). It's Jules Vernian in scope, and some of its postulates are accurate enough to be mathematical theorems, though they're qualitative instead of quantitative. For instance, the two-dimensional shape (I think it's a Pentagon) observes that, from space, he can see the insides of his fellow 2D beings. From the plane, he can see the "insides" (or, exteriors) of one-dimensional lines. It's quite thought-provoking... at least, once we get into the second half. The first half is a little boring and certainly overly long, but its made up for by the fact that it sets up a brilliant second half.

There's a couple of others that I've read and (nearly) finished since I last posted. (I've been involved in a production of Children of Eden at my local community center, and been on several trips, so I haven't had time to blog.) A couple of weeks ago, I finished J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. A little background: my mom read it to me when I was a kid, and I recently tried to read The Lord of the Rings in a summer month. Big mistake. I ended up dropping the series midway through the final book. I really do love the series, though, for its eloquence of prose and its pretty excellent (though slow, in LOTR) storytelling. So I vowed to restart the whole Tolkien universe a while back, and when I found a version of The Hobbit that I liked this summer, I bought it and set about reading it.

So, how is it? Agonizingly slow, at points. But bear in mind that this is an epic journey across a huge wilderness of a land. So I'll give Tolkien room for that. In other news, it has top-notch storytelling -- better than I remembered from LOTR. Every chapter feels like a fresh and original episode of the story. My complaints are few: Smaug being killed away from the dwarves is a bit anticlimactic, though it ultimately works (and I remember loving it on the first go-round); and the final battle is written in a very confused manner. I think Tolkien got better at this later, but I'm not sure, and my mom at least was slowed down by the battles in Lord of the Rings.

There's a surprising amount of characterization given to the dwarves, as well as to the lands; Gandalf is an extremely interesting character, even this early on. But back to what I said about originality: I noticed, as I went through the book, that a lot of locales and elements are re-used in Lord of the Rings. For example: the battle with a giant spider; a stint where everyone's lost in Moria; Hobbiton, even. The land only has a hundred years or so to change between books. I don't think it'll actually be too much of a problem, because Tolkien makes an effort to change it.

There's one more book I've been reading for school, as I mentioned, and that's Three Cups of Tea. It details Greg Mortensen and his one-man mission to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it, and so far it's really good, if a little slow and peppered with grammar errors. The author is pretty good at making the story interesting to read about (of course, this is pretty unique, so it's interesting already). While I can't really keep most of the characters straight, it doesn't matter too much, and the really important ones are emphasized enough that I figure out who they are; anyway, the most interesting thing to read about is Greg Mortensen's efforts. And this is unique-- I really think he might have made a difference in the region. I'm going to research where the Central Asia Institute is right now, but not until I finish the book.

If this is my last summer post -- which it looks like it will be -- then I hope anyone reading has a wonderful school year, and I'll be back periodically to report on my yearly reading. Next year, it starts again! I ended up only reading a few of the books on my list, but the ones I did read were generally pretty good, so I think this summer was a success.