The exquisite study of life and all its bittersweetness in The Hours

From The Week of March 17, 2014

As much as our memories suggest otherwise, life is filled with mundanity. Yes, we vividly remember the emotional moments that fire through our recollections, but these weddings and divorces, vacations and exhilarations, stand out largely thanks to just how much normality our brains have shrugged into the trash. Add up all the flashbulb days that transform and transfix us and, if we're fortunate, we're left with 40 or 50 standouts compared to tens of thousands of ordinaries. Which leads one to an inevitable conclusion.

To be good with life we must be good with the mundane. There is simply no other way to be happy. For to live principally for the days and nights that excite our blood is to place bets we're far more apt to lose than win. We must live for today, in whatever form it comes. But what if we cannot? What if the prospect of mundanity is a crushing reminder of of all of life's failures large and small? What if excitement is the only way for one to feel alive? What then? It's hard to imagine this pain demonstrated better than in Michael Cunningham's mesmerizing novel.

Decades apart, in three different parts of the world, the lives of Clarissa Vaughan, Laura Brown and Virginia Wolfe would appear to have little in common with one another. Clarissa is a woman of privilege, surrounded by artistic friends, living out the downside of middle age in 1990s New York; Laura is a still-youthful mother in California just beginning to come to grips with the constrictions of marriage in 1940s Los Angeles; and Virginia is a famous author, as brilliant as she is unstable, persisting in the suburbs of 1920s London. And yet, their lives are connected not just through the story of Mrs. Dalloway, which Virginia is creating, Laura is reading, and Clarissa is living, but through the extent to which they are all attempting to make good with the lives they've created and the talents they've been given.

The sum of these three interwoven narratives, The Hours is a captivating, non-linear rumination on the nature of everyday existence. Mr. Cunningham conceives of a single day in each woman's existence and, as the novel unfolds, allows their thoughts, their reactions and their emotions to fill in a life's worth of detail. By the work's conclusion, we not only understand Clarissa, Laura and Virginia in ways both profound and poignant, we come to understand that life is itself comprised of interactions which may individually appear to be meaningless but are, in the aggregate, quite literally who we are. We may be influenced by how our parents raised us, how our schools trained us and how our obligations wear on us, but how we handle all of life's moments is how we come to know ourselves and what we care about.

For The Hours' three spellbinding protagonists, this gestalt portrays a largely disquieting image of lives stifled by mental illness, by the chains of matrimony and by the weight of regret. In each case, we find disappointment lurking close by, waiting to ambush us at the first opportunity. For it is easy to feel, in retrospect, that we should have tried harder, should have overcome more, should have chosen better. And yet, we did what we could do in the moment. We gave what we could at the time. That this has failed to yield the optimum result is as much the fault of chance and circumstance than in our own stars. Of course, to us, this knowledge is cold comfort. It changes nothing. Our lives are still our own, still for us to lead, to endure.

As depressing as this truth appears, The Hours is in no way emotionally burdensome. Not only is there happiness here, even pleasure, an acknowledgement that mundanity has its own rewards, there is a powerful sense that most wounds can be healed if one recognizes them early enough. Regret and matrimony, for instance, are temporary states. Their condition can be alleviated in any number of ways, provided one has the time and the courage to do so. And in this way, we come to understand that mundanity is exquisitely bittersweet. It is the recognition of the good amidst the difficult. And it is this spirit that vivifies the book, elevating it from the dismal to the mind opening.

This is all quite deep. The fact is, in addition to its many rewarding layers, The Hours possesses glorious prose, a tender heart and a poignant message. It's little wonder that it won one of the most prestigious literary awards we have. Deservedly so... One of the most touching experiences I've had in years... (5/5 Stars)

The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy

From The Week of January 23, 2012

Power can be a pernicious force. For not only can its possession encourage the sweet-natured to be tyrannical, its loss can leave us feeling helpless and enraged. Power stokes our ego, allowing us to feel useful and confident, but it can leave us numb to the suffering of those who don't have it, dismissing them as weak and foolish, unworthy of our notice. Power changes how we view the world. Thus, anytime it shifts, there is cause for anxiety. Though this cynical and short piece from the legendary Mr. Tolstoy primarily concerns the dissolution of a marriage, it is the consequences of the redistribution of power that underpins his tale. It is a point sublimely, if unintentionally, made.

On a commuter train journeying through 19th century Russia, a truculent passenger makes a startling confession to those of his fellow travelers inclined to hear him. He has murdered his wife. After a long and difficult marriage, characterized by emotional and verbal discord, Pozdnyshev, the confessor, returns home from business to find his wife entertaining her musical instructor in their home. Embittered by years of disharmony and utterly incapable of blessing his wife with a moment's happiness and freedom, he flies into a rage which culminates in the flight of the instructor and the violent assault of his wife. This leads to not only the dissolution of his family -- his wife, on her deathbed, vengefully removes their five children from his care and gives them to her sister to raise --, it brings about her painful demise for which Pozdnyshev is tried. Dismissing the crime as one of passion, Pozdnyshev is acquitted and allowed to go free, having ruined all for which he cared.

Constructed as a conversation between Pozdnyshev and the story's narrator, The Kreutzer Sonata is, in the main, a warning against carnal love and a dissertation on female power and the extent to which its ascendance stokes male paranoia. Pozdnyshev, made callous by a loveless marriage, lays the blame for his unhappiness at the feet of his own male weakness and the liberalization of womens rights. He holds the view that men and women are fundamentally animalistic creatures, that the purpose of womankind is to perpetuate the species. Consequently, if women are given control over their own bodies, their own destinies, it will yield only disastrous results for the weak-willed man for which woman was created. Repeatedly, he reveals how he expected marriage to be a beautiful and fulfilling engagement, but that his joy was ruined by his wife's willingness to disagree with him, fight him, thwart him. He is completely incapable of realizing that his intractable nature is the cause of all his misery.

The Kreutzer Sonata is cynicism at its most potent. In Pozdnyshev, Mr. Tolstoy has seemingly created a straw man in whom all the author's dismay over the condition of man's soul can be invested. He appears to argue that, by dint of man's weakness and woman's deceptiveness, marriage is bound to be loveless and broken. But of course, this is nonsense. Marriage may well constrain us in ways that it is less than natural for us to be constrained, but Pozdnyshev's problem is that he expected his wife to be his perfect servant, not his perfect partner. He anticipated domination and received, instead, defiance. His inability to understand, respect or cope with this is the cause of his unhappiness, not the weakness of his soul. This is true of any marriage, the dissolution of which is rooted in an inability to adapt and communicate, not in some fundamental flaw. Human nature is imminently malleable. The moment we believe otherwise is the moment we condemn ourselves to rigid lives.

Deeper yet, we fear the loss of power. Having held its reins for so long, we have expectations that, when flaunted, cause us to salve our wounded pride with anger and rage. How dare our lessers defy us! How dare they possess their own wills to choose what they wish! This is what plagues Pozdnyshev. He cannot fathom a world in which he must enmesh his own behavior, his own desires, his own expectations, with his wife's. He cannot conceive of a marriage that does not spring up, fully formed and perfectly blissful. He cannot bring himself to understand that he will only harvest bitterness from a partnership into which he contributed nothing but his arrogance and his preconceived notions.

Fascinating work. Of course, it's possible that Mr. Tolstoy intended this to be satire, but the epilogue to the piece makes that possibility sadly remote. Love exists, just not when the power is this unbalanced. (3/5 Stars)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

From The Week of December 19, 2011

Revolution is an uncontrollable beast. We needn't look any further than the recent Arab Spring to divine this much. Once the will of the people to be free, of tyrants and tormenters, of oppression and corruption, has been ignited, no one can say where it will end. For no one can steer a revolution. It has a life of its own, as the gripes of the masses are vividly expressed and must needs run their course. Some revolutions, like the one executed by colonial Americans against the British empire, end in peace, in this case the construction of a mighty nation that would go on to rule the 20th century. But others, like the French Revolution which descended into the mass-slaughter of Frenchmen by other Frenchmen, are not so tidily concluded. In fact, these go on to create lasting wounds that take generations to heal, assuming they heal at all. It is this latter type Mr. Dickens chose to explore in this, his most memorable and difficult work.

In the latter decades of the 18th century, France underwent a sociopolitical convulsion the likes of which the modern world had never seen. Beset by disastrous economic conditions which, at one point, necessitated that french workers devote most of their wages to purchasing staples as basic as bread, the country finally erupted in a revolution that tore down the French monarchy and established, in its stead, notionally democratic rule. However, through arrogance, ignorance, mismanagement and the petty settling of scores, the French democracy, instead of accreting towards stability as the United States had done less than a decade earlier, devolved into nihilistic chaos known today as the Terror which took the lives of 40,000 French citizens and launched the age of politically motivated mass-killing.

Against the backdrop of this national nightmare stands Charles Darnay. The nephew of a French marquis assassinated for his abject cruelty, Darnay somehow grew up a man of virtue in a world of unregulated privilege. Rejecting both the teachings and the savagery of his uncle, Darnay falls in love with Lucie Manette, the Anglicized daughter of a French doctor who, after spending 18 years in the Bastille as a victim of the crimes of the nobility, is an eccentric, neurotic mess. Despite this trauma, Dr. Manette, who now lives in England as well, blesses Darnay's marriage to his daughter which lasts only a handful of happy years before Darnay is drawn, by his conscience, back to France- where he is identified as a former nobleman, arrested for presumed crimes and thrown headlong into a show trial that will surely see him executed.

Ensnared in the insanity of the Terror, Darnay nonetheless has powerful advocates fighting for him, advocates who believe in his goodness. But the French bloodlust is a vicious and demanding mistress. And nothing short of a death will satisfy her.

Though A Tale of Two Cities concerns, in the main, the French Revolution and the extent to which its indiscriminate violence entrapped countless innocence in its murderous wake, it is, at its heart, two tragic love stories. The one Mr. Dickens lavishes the most attention upon is Darnay and Lucie whose innocent happiness is sundered by the savagery of French patriots who, having killed so often and so mercilessly, have lost their way and their sanity. Here, though the author is none-too-subtle with his foreshadowing, Mr. Dickens successfully portrays the divisiveness of discord and the extent to which it encourages its most violent, human practitioners to arrogantly presume the guilt of those who only appear to be guilty. But though the novel spends far less time with it, it is the second love story that drives both the plot and serves as the harshest critique of authoritarian rule.

It concerns the decimation and the eventual destruction of an entire family at the hands of a vicious nobleman so transfixed by his own pleasure, and so secure in his own superiority, that he gives not a second thought to crimes as profound as rape and murder. These injustices light a vengeful fire in the hearts of peasants who are so determined to gain their revenge, to right abominable wrongs, that they overcompensate for their loss and fuel the very nihilism that destroys the democratic state the French Revolution promised to deliver.

These intertwined tragedies allow Mr. Dickens to make potent points about human nature. Firstly, people are not cruel in a vacuum. They are either made cruel by a system that allows them to be so, or they are driven to it by cruelty done to them. Secondly, and more importantly, once that cruelty is done, how can it be redeemed? How can a sin, or a lifetime of sins, be rectified? Absolved? Or can they be taken back?

A Tale of Two Cities is a difficult novel shackled by dated prose. It cannot be said to be an enjoyable experience. But the extent to which it is a rumination on revolution, its social, political and economic causes, and the myriad ways in which humans react to these, it is wonderfully poignant. A slog, but there are diamonds to be mined here, mined and treasured. (3/5 Stars)

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

From The Week of December 19, 2011

Though the Christmas season is far from perfect, it presents those of us in the West with an annual opportunity to make merry with, and feel grateful for, our loved ones. Yes, the commercialization of the season has drained away some of Christmas' simple joys, and certainly we all have relatives we'd rather avoid during this yearly celebration, but the fact remains that there is no other time of year in which, for a matter of weeks, we all, collectively and simultaneously, are in the mood to smile, to express our affection for those dearest to us, and to revisit memories of years past in which merriment was had, traditions laid down and bonds forged in a common desire to be happy. This universal joy has value; life is, after all, hard. Without the calendar's reminder to slow down and to appreciate what we have, it's doubtful we ever would. Beyond the social criticism, this is the message of universality encoded in Mr. Dickens' Christmas classic. It should never be forgotten.

Having inspired countless films and stories, A Christmas Carol, originally published in 1843, is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a pugnacious and miserly businessman who, in spite of his many successes, is determined to be a crass and cheerless man. Despite having a family to delight in and a prosperous business to take pride in, Scrooge cannot shake his pettiness which drives him to shun the poor, to overlook the worthy and to revel, even celebrate, the selfishness that has made him a cold-hearted loner. Not content with holding these corrosive opinions, Scrooge willingly voices them to everyone he encounters, doing his best to infect them with his dour cynicism.

However, for all of Scrooge's efforts at darkness, this Christmas, the seventh since the unmourned death of his business partner, Jacob Morely, is going to be unlike any he has experienced before. For this year, Scrooge is plagued by restless ghosts who entrap him and force him to revisit his misspent life. Pulling him into his own past, the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future show him those he failed to love, those his cruelty harmed, and, most importantly, those who will not mourn his passing. Chastened and frightened by the prospect of dying alone, Scrooge endeavors to mend his ways before it is too late.

Though Mr. Dickens was a talented author and an effective humorist, his best works are those in which his social criticism is sharpest. In this, A Christmas Carol is as subtle as a sledgehammer. With Scrooge, Mr. Dickens makes no bones about his contempt for the tight-fisted and unsympathetic upperclasses, their superiority, their smugness and their unwillingness to take responsibility for both their own actions and the suffering of the masses it is within their power to sooth. Instead, the wealthy tend to credit themselves with their successes and to devalue the contributions of others so that they might proudly stand alone, sneering down upon the struggling masses.

We all are entitled to live as we choose, to be as miserly and as cruel as we wish, but actions have consequences. At the end of life, when a poor, happy man and a rich, miserly man are dying, when they are about to leave behind all the pleasures and the pains of this world, they must know that none of their life's possessions can go with them, none of their baubles, none of their fortunes. If nothing materialistic can journey with the soul to face whatever is to come, then all that matters, in life, is the legacy we leave behind: the deeds we do, the lives we change, the promises we keep or break. At the extremity of life, this is how the dying are remembered by the living, the relationships, not the stuff. And this is what makes Christmas and Mr. Dickens' fable so powerful. They both force us to see what is important and what is materialistic, what is sacred and what is profane. They make us see that the celebration of our loved ones is far more valuable and lasting than the life of a scrooge.

Lovely work. As pointed as it is delightful. (4/5 Stars)

The Go-between by L. P. Hartley

From The Week of December 12, 2011

There are no wounds more damaging than those suffered as a child. For the young lack the armor possessed by the old, that particular toughening of skin and spirit that results from an accumulation of life's experiences. Adults can contextualize pain because they have endured it before and know it will pass, allowing peace to return at some future time. Children lack this perspective. To them, a wound may well last forever, or may well be the end of the world. They simply lack the knowledge to believe otherwise. Mr. Hartley has penned a wonderfully nostalgic novel and carried it to a moving conclusion, but it is providing this reminder, that we carry forward our childhood wounds, that his novel is gloriously and grievously potent.

Sparked by the rediscovery of a child's box of trinkets, The Go-between is an old man's ruminations on the most pivotal year of his life, 1900, when he was an innocent boy of 12. Colorless by nature, Leo Colston uses these mementos of his adolescence, chiefly a well-worn diary he once kept, to reflect upon his childhood, revealing in the process that Leo the younger was far different in temperament than Leo the elder. Where the latter is taciturn and grim, the former is spirited, energetic and care free, anticipating the life before him as much as he does the 20th century which holds so much promise. How did it come to pass that the same man could have possessed such different personalities at different stages of his life?

For an answer, Leo plunges us into the heat of the British summer of 1900 where, fresh off a difficult year at boarding school, young Leo accepts an invitation to summer with the Maudsleys, the well-to-do family of his schoolfriend, Marcus. While at Brandham Hall, a grand structure that once was the family home of the local viscount, Leo overcomes the shyness brought about by his relative poverty to capture brief moments of local glory by showcasing his voice at a concert and his glove in a cricket match. But as much as these pleasures sustain him, it is the devastating crush he has on Marian Maudsley, the elder sister of Marcus, that consumes all, turning else into pale remembrances. Leo will agree to do anything the lovely Marian wishes of him; serving as her little messenger boy -- carrying notes back and forth between herself and Ted burgess, a tenant of Brandham hall -- is nothing. But when it becomes clear that these notes are the keys to an inappropriate relationship between Marian and farmer Ted, Leo tries to withdraw. Marian is having none of it, though, and so Leo is forced to continue as the go-between, never imagining the doom his turn as Mercury might bring.

Originally published in 1953, The Go-between builds slowly to a wrenching conclusion. A classic of 20th century British literature, it is best remembered for its opening line: "the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." And yet, Mr. Hartley's novel is far more memorable as both a poignant and a devastating return to the memories and the wounds of childhood where formative experiences, for good or ill, shape us into the people we become. It is not too much to say that Leo is shattered by what befalls him at Brandham Hall in that fateful summer. He senses disaster's approach and even tries to avoid it. But falling prey to the passions of others, he cannot avoid onrushing events and is swallowed whole by them. His 12-year-old mind cannot grasp the complications of love and sex, of social classes and gender roles. He is an innocent, thoughtlessly taken up and discarded by fate and the Maudsleys, both of which expect him to understand and recover. But he does not and he cannot. For there are some introductions to life so harsh, so painful, that they cannot be overcome.

With its meandering plot, its preoccupation with symbols, its flirtation with the Zodiac and its exultation in nostalgia, The Go-between is slow to seize the reader's attention. But when the heat of the summer of 1900 finally proves too much for Leo and those for whom he has agreed to play postman, Mr. Hartley's piece explodes into an emotional, conflagrational conclusion that rends the heart. The innocence of youth, when lost, cannot be reclaimed. With a kind of gentle brutality, the author brings this lesson home. It will not be forgotten... (4/5 Stars)

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

From The Week of November 14, 2011

No matter how devout we are, all humans adhere to a creed. For nonbelievers, it is often a set of ethical principles that guide their actions in life. But while believers aspire to a similar, living morality, they must also grapple with questions concerning the life to come. Upon the death of the flesh, Where will their immortal souls reside? And what must be done in life to smooth that soulful journey? How best do they get right with god? While agnostics and atheists are spared the contemplation of these difficult and ultimately unanswerable problems, they remain, at least for theologians, points of contention that distinguish the sects within humanity's major religions. Consequently, they can be, for followers of those sects, literally matters of life and death. Mr. Waugh treats it thus in Brideshead Revisited.

In the tumultuous wake of the First World War which consumed much of western Europe in its fiery conflagration, Charles Ryder, a young Englishman born into comfortable if common circumstances, attends Oxford college where he befriends Sebastian, the prodigal son of the aristocratic Marchmain family. Eccentric and dysfunctional, the Marchmain clan, Charles learns through his association with the charming if drunken Sebastian, is plagued by a decades-old schism begun when Lord Marchmain, after converting from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in order to marry Sebastian's mother (Teresa), abandoned both his religion and his bride to settle, with his French mistress, into a comfortable, epicurean life in Venice. This abdication left Lady Teresa Marchmain free to impose the strictures of her Catholicism upon her four children, each of whom react differently to this profound development.

While her eldest son, Brideshead, and her youngest daughter, Cordelia, enthusiastically embrace Roman Catholicism, her eldest daughter, Julia, and her youngest son, Sebastian, suffer under its yoke. The former rejects a clear path to happiness in order to adhere to the faith's principles while the latter descends into alcoholism in order to numb the pain of failing to meet the standards it imposes upon him. Collectively, the five Marchmains present the agnostic Charles, an aspiring artist, with an opportunity to explore his own faith, an opportunity he seizes with a mixture of fascination and contempt. This is his first-hand account of his 20-year association with the family and the profound extent to which it has shaped his relationships, his career, his worldview and his religiosity.

Widely considered to be a classic of 20th century English literature, Brideshead Revisited is, in the main, Mr. Waugh's attempt to make the argument for Roman Catholicism to a skeptical, Anglicanized England. It is a shame, then, that this is perhaps the novel's weakest element. For in attempting to imbue the strictures of Roman Catholicism with grace and dignity, the author has managed, through Julia's suffering, through Sebastian's misery, and through Lord Marchmain's illness, to convey the abject pettiness that consumes dogmatists intent upon convincing those who do not think as they do that theirs is the only rightful road, that to travel any other path is to invite the fearsome disappointment of the almighty.

Perhaps there's a worthwhile argument to be made here; there is, after all, much to be said for encouraging the wayward to live a good and righteous life. But the author, instead, elects to argue that the blessings of the divine can only be felt through strict adherence to the proper interpretation of the Christian god's, at best, ambiguous will. In this, Mr. Waugh espouses the same nonsense advanced by dogmatists the world over. If there is a god looking over us, and if he is as wise and kind and caring as some would have us believe, then the last thing such a being would care about is a slavish adherence to the fine points of religious rituals, or the accurate interpretation of scripture. An omnipresent being would judge us on the contents of our souls, on the depth of our humanity, and on the quality of our actions. He would measure us by what matters, not by honoring every possible point of canonical law.

As much as Brideshead Revisited labors under an outdated and misguided argument for religion, it is, in every other respect, an exquisite novel. Mr. Waugh imbues the friendship between Charles and Sebastian with emotion and subtlety, so much so that he leaves the reader grasping at the extent of the relationship shared between the two men. More over, the author's choice to make Charles the unreliable narrator is paid off wonderfully well, as the reader is treated to the innerworkings of a cynical mind occasionally brought low by fits of uncontrollable passion. Finally, the extent to which Mr. Waugh deploys the entanglements of religion to create tragedy and chaos in the Marchmain family leaves the canvas of the piece splattered with tempestuous emotion that does the work justice and brings each of its eccentric characters to life. Few English works can claim better prose.

This is a masterwork that is, unfortunately, marred by the biases and theological preoccupations of its author. Nonetheless, it is a worthy read. For it is a window into a time in English history now gone, the interwar period that brought low the manorborn and raised up the common man. And in this, it is as much a piece of delightful nostalgia as it is a work of literary excellence. (4/5 Stars)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

From The Week of October 31, 2011

Though humans have many commendable qualities to recommend them, kindness, generosity and compassion to name a few, it is, nonetheless, a species whose members are obsessed with the desire to draw distinctions between themselves and their fellows. Be they differences in race, in culture, even in the clothes they choose to wear, distinguishing oneself from the crowd appears to be essential to the human experience. This divisiveness may well be nothing more than an outgrowth of that fundamental strain of individualism that underpins human identity. If so, more's the pity; for there can be few aspects of the human character that have lead to more hatred and discord than this otherness in which we take so much pride. For this is also the fuel that has powered the racial conflicts that have divided us for so long and for which our forefathers have so much to answer. Rarely has the pain of these foolish distinctions been better rendered than in The Color Purple.

Set in rural Georgia of the early 20th century, Ms. Walker's 1982 classic centers on the very different lives of Celie and Nettie, two black sisters enduring all of life's hardship in hopes of reuniting after a long and unwelcome separation. Celie, unattractive and uneducated, is deprived of her childhood when, after sexually abusing her for years, treatment that resulted in two pregnancies, her father arranges to marry her off to a man she only refers to as Mister. Her children gone, presumed by her to have been killed by her father, Celie settles into a joyless marriage, taking solace in her letters to god and in the handful of resilient women that make her life bearable. Nettie, meanwhile, who ran away from their father's shameless schemes, is taken in by missionaries, Samuel and Corrine, who plan to travel to Africa to preach and live with the people of their ancestors. Along with their two adopted children, the missionaries take Nettie with them, beginning a decades-long stay in Africa where Nettie is mostly buffered from the Second World War and the social changes it brings to the United States.

Having thought Nettie dead, Celie is shocked when she, and her lover Shug, discover that Celie's husband has been receiving letters from Nettie for years. Uncovering them in Mister's trunk, Celie is both shattered by this darkest betrayal and heartened to realize that her sister is alive and well in Africa. But while her attempts to write Nettie back prove unsuccessful, Celie is motivated to make something of her life independent of the men she was trained to please. In this, though the two sisters are separated by thousands of miles and dozens of years, they both overcome the poverty of their youth to become successful, independent women.

Told through a series of letters penned by the sisters to one another, and from Celie to god, The Color Purple is a powerful statement about the extent to which the marginalization of minorities leads to crime and depravity. Celie lives in a world devoid of justice. There is no police to help keep her father from abusing her, no court to annul her arranged marriage to Mister, and certainly no social services capable of delivering her from the clutches of her parasitical parent. Consequently, Celie is stuck in a life of servitude until the example set for her by two women within her community empower her to carve her own business and her own happiness out of an existence that has given her nothing and a country that has done its best to forget her. But for these revelations, Celie must suffer extraordinarily, a plight which no one should have to endure to achieve enlightenment and happiness.

As much as the reader is moved by Celie's narrative, Nettie's half of the tale proves less successful. While her presence is essential to the story's potent conclusion, her contributions, otherwise, are minimal at best. But for laying the groundwork for one of Celie's key revelations, her passages are little more than descriptions of a missionary's life in Africa. While the reader is informed about the nature of such work, and while it nicely contrasts Celie's ordeals, it does little to move the reader's emotional meter.

Nonetheless, this is riveting work. Ms. Walker's decision to tell Celie's tale in a thick, ungrammatical dialect allows the reader to create a sympathetic link with Celie that the novel richly rewards. At times chilling, off-putting, gripping and heartwarming, The Color Purple is notable, emotive fiction. (4/5 Stars)

Flow My Tears The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

From The Week of September 19, 2011

Though humans take for granted many aspects of life, identity is arguably the most important of these overlooked fundamentals. For it is identity that grounds us in reality, the rock of self around which the oceans of our chaotic world crash and break. Without a solid grasp of who we are and what we stand for, we are anchorless in a world built on principles of consistency and logic. For some, this is a natural consequence of mental conditions like Schizophrenia, conditions that cause the human mind to distort reality. But what if identity is actively stripped from us? What if it is removed from the equation of human life? Do we become shiftless beings, not only unstuck in reality but cut out of the working machinery of the world around us? Flow My Tears The Policeman Said first asks the question and then sets out to provide an answer that is as nightmarish as it is compelling.

Originally published in 1974, this award-winning novel from Mr. Dick, best known for writing the short story upon which the movie Blade Runner was based, imagines the dystopian future of 1988 in which the United States, after convulsing its way through a second civil war, this one brought about as a result of the social revolution of the 1960s, has collapsed into a brutal, totalitarian police state. The Nats (national guardsmen) and the Pols (the police) comprise the government which is justifiably feared by a well-cowed citizenry distracted by the widespread availability of elicit sex and recreational drugs. The students who fought the police for control of the country's future have been thoroughly defeated, many captured and relocated to labor camps while the few that remain free scratch out a meager existence underground, away from the harsh lights of a relentless authority.

In this dark world of checkpoints and police brutality, of forced labor camps and sterilized minorities, life is livable for those who keep their heads down and avoid the notice of the authorities. One of the most successful of these is Jason Taverner, one of the world's most famous celebrities. The anchor of a variety program, he is regularly watched and adored by millions of rabid fans who assiduously ignore the fact that, in his fifth decade now, their hero is not only aging, his famous voice is failing. Carefully cloaked in the privilege of his powerful celebrity, Jason fears nothing, that is, until a late-night encounter with a woman scorned sends him to the hospital for treatment, where upon he wakes to find himself in a shabby hotel. Worse, while he still has his nice clothes and rich-man's cash, he seems to have entered a world in which Jason Taverner never existed, a world that has never known his smile, his voice, or his television program. His agents, lawyers, lovers and friends? All deny having ever heard of the world-famous Jason Taverner.

In one night, Jason has plunged from the heights of privilege into the depths of the underclass, that body of the unknown and forgotten people who so often find themselves ground beneath the heavy boots of the authorities. Will Jack recapture the heights he once knew, or will this world that never knew him be too unforgiving of a man who does not fit the proper pattern, this man who does not exist?

Flow My Tears The Policeman Said is thought provoking work which is as philosophical as it is mysterious. While exploring the nature of identity and love, celebrity and society, Mr. Dick is careful to hand out only clues to Taverner's ultimate fate, the nature of which hangs potently over the entirety of this charmingly dated novel. However, for all its stimulating virtues, it is not without flaws. Though all is made clear at the conclusion of the piece, the author's reveal has the feel of a cheat, falling back on strange pseudo science to justify a plot whose authenticity would have benefited from remaining mysterious. What's more, Mr. Dick, here, is hard on his main female characters, none of whom exhibit even glimmers of sanity or impulse control. Granted, Mr. Dick's male characters hardly fair much better, but the men have their motivations explained, their backgrounds fleshed out. The women, meanwhile, remain difficult and whiny caricatures who appear to be present in the story merely to provoke the men into self-revelation.

All this being true, Mr. Dick is nonetheless considered a master of science fiction because of works like these. He utilizes the tools provided to him by the genre, genetic engineering, futuristic technology, massive social change, etc., to build a platform for a provocative discussion about what grounds us in our society, what keeps us from slipping out of our place in the hierarchy that provides structure to our civilization. His conclusion, that this is almost entirely attributable to identity, as recognized by ourselves and by those around us, is as convincing as it is a gateway into a greater discussion about the way in which humans interact with their civilizations.

Sure, it's dated, presenting a world that possesses flying cars while still utilizing payphones, but we can forgive this. After all, for Mr. Dick, the backdrop seems to be nothing more than window dressing for the investigation of humanity that is the drama of the piece. (3/5 Stars)

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

From The Week of September 12, 2011

Much of the 20th century was taken up by the debate over the proper answer to a single, momentous question. For a free society, what is the ideal government? Is it the government which governs least as favored by avid free-marketeers? Is it the government which governs most as favored by socialists and communists? Or is it perhaps a government that occupies a middle road, adopting elements of each extreme to forge some sort of working, if messy, amalgam? To answer this question, The Dispossessed wraps itself in science fiction, imagining a future world in which these thought experiments can be safely run and conclusions drawn. And though the novel indulges in some of the genre's less pleasant tropes, it is otherwise, justifiably, a classic of utopian fiction.

In a star system not far from the burned-out Earth of the future, a planet and its moon persist in close proximity to one another, each supporting very different societies. On Urras, the planet, abundant natural resources and an endurable climate have catalyzed both industrialization and the rise of nation states. Though capitalism has been the traditional model, recent challenges to its dominance have come from two very different groups. The most dangerous of these is Thu, one of Urras' more powerful nation states, which practices an authoritarian collectivism similar to the Soviet Union of the early 20th century. Its ruling class, claiming the imprimatur of its proletariat, agitates against Io, the capitalist state which claims to be a profiteer's paradise (read the United States).
. The second threat comes from Urras' moon, anarres, a dry and desolate place which, for two centuries, has been devotedly cultivated by anarcho-collectivists fled urras centuries earlier to found a free paradise.

This delicate balance of rival states and opposing ideologies is tipped into chaos when Shevek, a brilliant physicist, from anarres, travels to Urras, claiming to have insights into a grand unified theory that would revolutionize physics and open the door to new and powerful technologies. He is received by Io and put up in prime housing, given servants, a teaching position and access to Io's highly educated intelligentsia. But instead of impressing him, the luxuries of Io's society discomfort Shevek who has only ever known the radical utilitarianism practiced on Anarres. What the people of Io see as the fruits of profit he sees as the sins of exploitation. If he gives his discovery to Io, will they commodify it? Will they turn it into another of their brilliant baubles? And would that not be a betrayal of everything he was raised to believe in, that people are free only when they are able to make their own choices, uncoerced by any ruling class? Shevek must rely on his own wits and wisdom to help him navigate a foreign world and its foreign customs in hopes of arriving at a solution that satisfies his morality and his ethics. For given into the wrong hands, his knowledge could mean the end of everything he knows.

Though The Dispossessed is something of a difficult slog, the extent to which Ms. Le Guin has created an innovative and believable alternative to the polarization of American capitalism and Soviet collectivism marks this work out as something special. Anarres is easily the novel's greatest virtue. For here Ms. Le Guin has dreamed up a kind of non-authoritarian communism, a political system founded on an anarchism quite similar to that imagined by Emma Goldman. While everyone lives free, completely unfettered by rules or obstructions, each member of Anarres' society is taught that their survival hinges upon collective effort. There is no private property; there is only that which belongs to the whole and can be used by everyone. The whole is grown by the collective efforts of all with hording kept in check by the threat of public ridicule.

At first glance, it seems like this might actually be a viable alternative to authoritarian systems, but this strain of anarcho-collectivism has two problems, the first of which Ms. Le Guin has already anticipated. Firstly, humans are, by nature, hierarchical animals and, consequently, they naturally gravitate towards powerful personalities. Not everyone has an equivalent desire to be an individual. Some people want to conform. And where there is conformity there will be someone willing to capitalize on that conformity. This is a problem that plagues anarres. For as much as its society was founded on non-authoritarian freedom, the passage of 200 years has begun to calcify the permanent revolution, allowing authority figures to loom larger and larger, accreting power from the individuals they purport to serve. Secondly, Ms. Le Guin does not convince me that the Anarres model would work anywhere else. In order for her experiment to function, the author had to run it on a desert moon whose proper cultivation required the collective efforts of all its entrapped inhabitants. The people of anarres cannot leave for other opportunities, other lives. The absence of a space program obligates them to work together. This creates a bond among the people of Anarres, a bond with their comrades and the land they work, which helps to re-enforce their ideology. But what if such an experiment was run on Earth, a place where the experiment's participants were constantly being bombarded with capitalistic temptations, where they could leave for capitalism at whim? It seems to me that though ideal in theory, Ms. Le Guin's radical collectivism suffers in practice the same flaw of all anarchist societies, that it is inherently asocietal, that its rabid individualism tears at the communal bonds that create societies, preventing a coherent culture from coalescing.

The Dispossessed is, in many respects, a failure as a piece of entertainment. Stuffiness, long-windedness and a total absence of action plague long stretches of the work. However, as a thought experiment? As an effort to imagine and then actualize an idea of how we might ideally live? It is brilliantly conceived and artfully laid out. This is thoughtful, intellectual fiction. For those seeking entertainment, best look elsewhere. (3/5 Stars)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

From The Week of March 27, 2011

For many, the tempestuous relationship of Catherine and Heathcliff, the dyad around which Wuthering Heights revolves, is darkly, fantastically romantic. It burns with a boundless, dangerous passion that has kept this classic of British literature circulating through English syllabi for decades. But while I agree that Catherine and Heathcliff are magnetic characters worthy of celebration, Wuthering Heights is, in almost every other respect, an inferior, Gothic novel.

Narrated almost entirely through dialogue, Ms. Bronte's most famous work is comprised of the recollections of Ellen Dean, a housekeeper for the wealthy Mr. Lockwood who has traveled to northern England in search of a respite from his troubles. Dean, who works at the home in which Mr. Lockwood is staying, relates to her rich, southern tenant the legendary tale of Catherine and Heathcliff Earnshaw. One night, in an act of charity, Catherine Earnshaw's father collects and brings home an orphaned gypsy boy (Heathcliff) whom he later adopts. But when, some few years later, Catherine's father dies, Heathcliff loses his best advocate, leaving him no armor against the jealous spite of Hindley Earnshaw, brother of Catherine. What began as a sibling rivalry between the boys has flared, now, into enmity as, after years of living as part of the Earnshaw family, Heathcliff is reduced to playing a servant in their household. Perhaps Heathcliff would've endured this humiliation for the love of Catherine with whom he is clearly besotted, but when, after associating with their rich, cultured neighbors, she too turns on Heathcliff, the scarred adolescent hurls himself from the only home he's ever known, bent on transforming himself into a man of power capable of exacting revenge upon the family that has wronged him.

Though Wuthering Heights is beautifully written and powerfully tragic, the core conceits of its plot prevent it from truly taking flight. In order to advance the story, Ms. Bronte finds it necessary to interfere and maneuver her characters into positions where the right piece of dialogue is heard by the right character in exactly the wrong mood. For instance, on the heels of Hindley demoting him to a servant, Heathcliff just happens to overhear Catherine announcing her affection for Edgar, the Linton's son in whom she's made a friend, but he misinterprets her meaning, assumes a betrayal and flees the house, setting into motion the second half of the book. Literary lights as luminous as Shakespeare have deployed such tricks in the execution of a tale, but that doesn't make it any less sloppy. In order for any story of note to have meaning, it must have a gloss of realism. But repeatedly, Ms. Bronte intercedes to position her characters just right, so they might overhear the right piece of dialogue, so they can ask the right questions. This leads to my second criticism.

Wuthering Heights is poorly served by its narrators, Dean and Mr. Lockwood. While having Dean relay the story simplifies the structure for Ms. Bronte by releasing her of the necessity to tell, first-hand, a story that spans more than 30 years, it distances the reader from the piece's emotional events. The reader is aware, from the moment Dean begins her story, that all we are about to experience has come to pass. Mr. Lockwood could, at any time, go out and ask Heathcliff himself for his version of events. Instead, the reader is locked into consuming hundreds of pages of improbable dialogue, most of which provided by Dean who apparently possesses the most remarkable memory in human history. If Mr. Lockwood had a stronger presence in the story, perhaps choosing this structure would have brought something to the table. But as it is, Mr. Lockwood is nothing more than an ornament, a stand-in for the reader.

Wuthering Heights is a wonderfully savage book, shot through with raw and emotional characters. Heathcliff's journey into darkness is fascinating and disturbing, while Catherine's decline as a result of Heathcliff's passion is powerfully potent. But I felt far too manipulated by the author to enjoy a story about a love sundered by spite. Such strong emotion should be truly earned; it shouldn't be a cheap trick to facilitate what comes. (3/5 Stars)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

From The Week of March 20, 2011

Ever since High School English crammed Charles Dickens down my throat, I've had an awkward relationship with classic literature. Seventeen-year-old boys don't, as a rule, groove on stories they can't immediately relate to. The result? The blurry-eyed, when will this nightmare be over slog of skimming through chapters and pounding out semi-coherent assignments for books loaded up with antique language and populated by culturally alien characters. Doesn't exactly scream love affair, does it? Well, more the fool me because, it turns out, ten years on, I love this stuff! Jane Eyre has Gothic gravitas, sympathetic characters, emotional acuity and a delicate sense of horror. But all this is merely icing atop the cake, Jane herself, surely one of the best heroines in English literature.

Living at the sufferance of her aunt, Jane Eyre is an unwanted orphan girl whose existence within the Reed family is only tolerated because of her uncle's dying wish that she be given a roof over her head. Once her only advocate is dead, however, the Reeds prove to be merciless with Jane until, one day, the ten-year-old girl snaps and forces her aunt to confront the extent to which she has allowed, and participated in, Jane's emotional and physical abuse. Such disobedience cannot be tolerated, especially not in 19th century England, and so Jane is packed off to boarding school where our young protagonist is acquainted with the hardships of the outside world: disease, poverty, religiosity and cynicism. It's only when an eighteen-year-old Jane, now a governess by trade, is hired on as a servant in the home of the wealthy and mannerly Edward Rochester that life catches fire and she's plunged into a long and winding love affair with enigmatic Edward and his mannerly set.

Standing in the way of the union of Eyre with Rochester, however, are forces both predictable and supernatural. The former takes the form of Blanch, the elegant daughter of a wealthy family who would make Edward a fine but empty marriage. The latter is far more ominous, a demonic force which has taken root in the Rochester home, threatening to murder both Jane and her impossible love. Will the myriad impediments of class, jealousy and wounded pride prevail over Jane's and Edward's love, or will they find a way to unite in spite of a world dead set against them?

Though most everything about British, and Western, society has changed since the 1848 publication of Jane Eyre, Ms. Bronte's themes here are so universal, so strikingly relevant to the 21st century, that her lovely book wears its age better than most of its contemporaries. Jane is an exceptional protagonist who manages, somehow, to be self-assured, dignified and heroic, all without indulging in piousness or self-righteousness. She does not whine or fuss over the hand that life dealt her; admirably, she puts her head down and pushes onward, trying to succeed in a world that does no favors to women of her class. But it's Her cool disregard for the cruel conventions of British life I love most. Jane Eyre doesn't hesitate to attack the inequities of British society. Blanch may be a caricature, but her sense of entitlement has the echo of authenticity. Set against Jane's pragmatic but penniless goodness and there's little doubt of where virtue lies.

Good things come to those who work hard, expecting nothing but the results of their own labor. This doesn't mean be a pushover; one has to stand up for their beliefs, to be the best while demanding the best from those around them. Jane is the only one here who walks the walk and talks the talk and, as a result, she can't lose. It's so refreshing to read a well-written piece from a more cloistered time that features a heroine superior to those our more advanced society puts forward. Not to mention, Jane Eyre has, in St. John, the perfect villain. No violence, no thunder, no gratuity... Just a man doing wrong as a result of acting out of pure selfishness. The man virtually does nothing untoward, yet, Ms. Bronte succeeds in making him, in all his self-righteousness and moralizing, an infuriating figure.

This is superior fiction: tension, anxiety, horror, and even a little joy. For fans of Gothic fiction of the Sarah Waters ilk, a must consume. (5/5 Stars)

Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

From The Week of December 19, 2010

I'm no Russian scholar, so many will extract from this an understanding of Dostoyevsky's ideas and the politics and culture of 19th century Russia superior to my own. Despite my inexperience however,I have found value here, a powerful message that has relevance to our time, even though much of the crushing inequality that motivated its writing has fallen into the past.

If one set out to create a crucible on Earth, one would not have to go beyond life in 19th century Russia to find a good model from which to build the perfect, hellish test. Socially rigid, manifestly unjust, and bitterly, bitterly cold, it was a country that lost out on the industrial revolution and the Enlightenment, the two key drivers that economically and intellectually powered western Europe into the 20th century. While Western kings were yielding to empowered parliaments, Russia's monarchs remained harsh dictators who, even when they tried to do good, managed only to perpetuate harm and inequality. It is into this bleakness that Dostoyevsky has penned this philosophical piece about a man who, under the weight of so much injustice, cracks and becomes a spiteful, ugly creature who preoccupies himself with petty grievances that, for the lack of anything else in his life, he converts into lifelong grudges that consume him.

Penned in diary form, the narrator, whose name is never given, first relates his dark philosophy and his cynical views on man and then goes on to convey three episodes in his pathetic life which demonstrate why he believes as he does. From his anger at his insignificance to the man who bumps into him but refuses to apologize, to his fury at being alternately tolerated and ignored by dinner companions he considers beneath him, and to his dismay that the prostitute he sleeps with might think him a good man, our nameless antihero lashes out at every one and every thing around him, hating and blaming the society that has made him such a disgusting creature.

Though the sentiment here is made a little archaic by the advancement of liberalism through much of the world, Notes From Underground remains a potent expression of how the society in which we live influences us, to good or ill. In a lawful, equitable society, optimism and idealism are nurtured by the belief that merit is the only consideration by which one succeeds or fails. But in a dictatorial, inequitable society, the opposite is true. Centralized power deprives all but the privileged few of the opportunity to achieve anything meaningful. Merit is tossed aside for favoritism and nepotism, a rigid reality which only ensures that the masses are stuck with no future but the endless repetition of the task at hand. But as much as I can imagine how this would drive anyone insane, our antihero here isn't let completely off the hook. Even if a good life can't be practiced in an inequitable society, it still should be attempted. After all, to break is to surrender, to admit that the oppressive power has won.

This is not an easy read, but it's a valuable one. And though its melodrama is characteristically Russian, its message about the perniciousness of inequality shines through. (3/5 Stars)

Paradise Lost by John Milton

From The Week of September 05, 2010

I may be something of a literary snob, but I am not a heartless literary snob. I understand that, but for poetry lovers and bibliophilic masochists, one does not voluntarily read Paradise Lost, especially if one does not have at least a passing familiarity with 17th century English. And yet, this is one of the great re-shapings of Western literature, not just because it fleshes out the Book of Genesis, but because it commandeers the players of that story, Adam, Eve, God and Satan, and re-casts their roles as heroes and villains. This may or may not have been intentional on Milton's part, his sympathies having run strongly to the protestant. But it's certainly clear that, with the advancement of liberal democracy since the poem's first publication, the way we view the players here, and even the players in the Bible, has changed with the evolution of society's values.

Paradise Lost is a 5,000 line poem that was meant to be performed for an audience. This is not just apparent in its structure, with the action at the beginning and the explanation for the action later on, it is in the prominence of the narrator's role throughout. The narrator reveals to the reader the sight of Lucifer and his host of rebel angels thrown down into Hell. The narrator spies on first their recovery and then their council which decides to send Satan out from Hell on a mission to find the new Earth of God's creation. The narrator flies us through the cosmos with Satan as he works his way passed the gates of Hell and into paradise where, disguising himself as a serpent, he tempts Eve into committing the first sin, the disobedience of God, eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. And it's the narrator who sadly recounts to us the consequences of that sin as Adam grows angry with Eve, then angry with his plight, before ultimately becoming resigned to his fate as first man and first woman are educated about the world and then thrown into it, exiling them forever from Eden.

Reading these words, it is an easy thing to close ones eyes and imagine a long ago town square where a blind Milton summoned the attention of his fellow Englishman with a new kind of drama which put energy and excitement into an old and tired tail his listeners would have heard a million times before. The vivid descriptions of the foulness of Hell juxtaposed by the beauty of Eden fire the imagination, just as its detailed recountings of the arguments between God and Christ, between Satan and his captains, between Adam and Eve, bring life to characters who, being that many of them are objects of worship, deserve nothing less. It makes real, and personal, a story that otherwise seems remote, animating drama from lore. But in doing this, it throws up some interesting surprises.

There can be no question that, viewed through a 21st century lens, Satan is the protagonist and antihero of Paradise Lost. Adam and Eve are slavish adherents to God's will until Satan subverts that blind faith, prodding the pair to put their own actions, their own needs, ahead of god, ahead of others. What would have read as selfish and impious to the 17th century reads now as a clear and concise statement of individual freedom, the right to act as one wishes and be what one wishes to be. The Satan of Paradise Lost is an American individualist. God of Paradise Lost is a tyrant who demands fealty for the sake of fealty. And when his children let him down, as he knows they will, he punishes them with the withdrawal of his affections and the revocation of his largess. True, Satan does these things for his own selfish and petty motives, but the symbolism here is nonetheless difficult to ignore.

This is a powerful and beautiful recreation of a biblical story which has had profound implications for the way that men treat women, for the way we view evil, and for the way that we all view power and those who have it. It's difficult, no question, but it's well worth it. You just might want to have a dictionary handy, one with lots of old English words. (5/5 Stars)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

From The Week of June 20, 2010

Walden may not be thought of as a classic of American literature on par with The Great Gatsby or the like, but it is surely the most famous work of Henry David Thoreau, an influential, 19th century, American philosopher who, aside from being a leading transcendentalist, was a proponent of environmentalism, civil resistance and the abolishment of slavery. Though Walden chiefly concerns itself with thoreau's views on the environment, he makes room here to expound upon many of his passions, causing this to be a well-rounded glimpse into a most remarkable man.

Walden is an account of Thoreau's year spent in the wild. Locating a cabin suitable to his needs, he, in an early nod to we guilty liberals from the next century, devotes himself to living off the land during each of the four New England seasons which can be beautiful, challenging, uncomfortable and deadly. The cabin itself is a charitable description for a room that is little more than a monk's cell. It is a single, bare room, uncluttered by anything but a few personal effects and a handful of outdoorsy necessities. Thoreau ruminates upon his days, his food habits, his thoughts, his dreams. He describes his journeys through the forest, the opinions of those in nearby Concord who think him nuts, and the few visits from his friends to his simple home. And in all this, there is a kind of clarity, of mind and of purpose, emanating from this expression of absolute minimalism which reaches out and connects with us all these decades later.

To each their own, but it seems to me that, in all the noise of our 21st century lives, we've neglected the value of just stopping, listening and reaching out to the beyond. I'm not a sentimentalist by disposition -- I'm just as bombarded by the Noise as anyone --, but there is clarity in silence and in nature. There's a way, in that moment, to grasp onto something larger, a gravitas that only the passage of millions of years can create. And though each of us will learn something different from that silence, from that mental connection, we will all learn something. Mr. Thoreau has many lessons to teach about ethics and the rightness of things, but this stillness, this reflection is the truth that will span the centuries and bestow upon him a legacy for ages. (4/5 Stars)

Animal Farm by George Orwell

From The Week of June 13, 2010

What can I say for Animal Farm that hasn't already been said. Amazing, terrifying, prescient, and perfect... Mr. Orwell's surgical assault on authoritarianism and all its tricks sends chills down the spines of all those familiar with tyranny.

Animal Farm is pure satire comprised of intelligent and self-aware animals who labor on an Englishman's farm. Notwithstanding their abnormal powers to speak and reason, the animals are stereotypes of their species: the plodding but devoted workhorse, the clever and lazy pig, the happy and compliant sheep. Fed up with their unfair working conditions, the animals lead a successful revolt against their human owners, driving them from the farm. Though the human neighbors believe the animals will soon ruin the farm, the revolutionaries make it a going concern, occupying it, defending it, and then turning it into a profitable, cooperative venture where all the needs of every animal are met. They codify the laws of their utopia, writing them on the wall of the barn so that everyone can see them, learn them, comprehend them and follow them. But as time passes, divisions within their unified ranks begin to appear, divisions which, while slight at first, eventually grow in scale and severity until the animal utopia is little more than a remembered dream.

If Mr. Orwell's tale was nothing more than an intellectual exercise, it would be clever and inventive, but that it so perfectly captures the inevitabilities of authoritarian rule transforms a simple short story into a tale of heartbreaking truth about human failing which is this. In order to justify bleeding and dying for a cause, humans have to believe in that cause. No one would volunteer for martyrdom if they did not believe. But while belief in a cause grants humanity an almost supernatural strength, it also removes any capacity they have to view the cause impartially. They must believe. To do else is to allow in doubt. And doubt puts at risk the stability, the purpose, that faith has given them. The leaders of causes understand this weakness well enough to use it to rewrite histories, to reshape the cause's goals, slowly, insidiously, over time. And the believers accept these changes, revising their own memories to do so. And they must do this, they must comply, for to do anything else would be to doubt the leaders,which would mean doubting the cause, which would mean doubting the sacrifices made for the cause, a dissonance they cannot tolerate. It's a perfect encapsulation of how the human failing of the need to believe in something can be harnessed, forged, and then wielded as a mighty weapon by the clever hypocrites who know just how to exploit the exploitable. An absolute must read. And being that it is a scant 110 pages, it won't take long at all to have your mind appropriately blown. (5/5 Stars)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

From The Week of February 28, 2010

It may be that many of you have seen the famous film which was based on this infamous 1962 novel by Mr. Burgess. If not, and if you're not familiar with the book either, then strap in and hold on. You're about to embark upon a difficult and disturbing journey into the lives and minds of four disaffected youths, living in a future, dystopian Britain rife with nihilism and the degradation of society.

Alex, our main eyes and ears on this journey -- it is impossible to call the vile thug a protagonist --, seems to live, moment to moment, experience to experience. In an effort to stave off boredom, and to maintain his status as head of his little gang of youths, he leads them to acts of brutality which are as mindless as they are cruel. There's literally no level to which Alex and his crew will not stoop. And so, when the gang is busted up and Alex apprehended by the authorities, the reader feels a certain sense of satisfaction, that the world is being set right. But of course, this is where the true nightmare begins. Alex is subjected to a kind of cruel brainwashing which distorts his sense of pleasure and pain. But not only does the brainwashing de-claw him, it makes painful his one, true, innocent pleasure in life, music.

Though Mr. Burgess' plot is moving and disturbing, the extent to which he's able to seize our anger at Alex, twist it up and use it against us is the genius of the piece. The dialect Alex uses to narrate the tale is clever and affecting as well, but there was something powerful in feeling pity for such a vile creature. It takes a special kind of skill to pull off such a feat. Foulness aside -- and I do not think this book could've been any longer than its slim 190 pages without making me want to swallow razorblades --, I salute Mr. Burgess' literary craft. This is a difficult job done well. (3/5 Stars)

The Castle by Franz Kafka

From The Week of August 09, 2009

Kafka floats out there, in western culture, like a mystery waiting to be confronted. Is it enjoyable? No, but The Castle, at least, is a clever and frighteningly labyrinthine denouncement of bureaucracy, both as a concept and as it is applied to governments that existed then and still exist now. I found this to be something of a good piece of art; you halfway understand it, but you walk away knowing there's more there if you just look a bit harder, or is that just an illusion? Interesting and challenging... (3/5 Stars)