Book Worm Chat

Omensetter’s Luck

I’ve come to expect that when I pick up a book, it will tell me a story, most likely its structure will be linear, and I will finish it with some understanding of what the story was about. I may learn something or find some poetic insight in the words. The process itself is not as boring and mechanical as I just made it sound, sorry about that. I’m summarizing my reading in the simplest of terms.

With Omensetter’s Luck, my expectations were not quite met, but that’s not to say I was disappointed. To be quite frank, I found this book challenging to read, at times bloody confusing because of the prose Gass wrote in. I guess you could say Gass totally grasped the stream - of - conscious kind of prose. My first thought was that a little order wouldn’t hurt! Too often I lost track of who was speaking and to whom, and whose thoughts was I reading in this paragraph because there wasn’t much of the usual dialogue structure.  Confused? Let’s assume Gass did this intentionally. Let’s assume he scorned the rigid ‘he said and then she said to which he responded’ structure. Let’s assume this because why not?  Life isn’t linear; our thoughts aren’t linear, so why should a piece of fiction be linear?

            There’s something unexplainable about lucky people. Brackett Omensetter had the luck of legends. And yet, the circumstances from which he immerged ‘as lucky’ were some of the most dreadful events that could happen to a person. Omensetter was an odd sort of fellow because he was humble and looked at life with what could be described as either a childlike naivety or ruthlessness. He seemed to trust wholeheartedly in the unexplainable fortune that things would always be okay in the end. It was frightening for some of the townsfolk of Gilean and even for his wife Lucy at times to trust in Omensetter’s luck but they didn’t have much of a choice. Omensetter wouldn’t see or have it any other way. He wouldn’t go out of his way to change the course of things, like put a bullet in a dying and agonizing fox, because he believed that these things were supposed to happen. How do you feel about a character like that? Should he have the right to accept things as they are or should he change them to help someone, even himself?

People of Gilean seemed to study even a little bit of everyone else in town, to what avail? They were quick to turn on a neighbor, yet they were quick to gang up when there was an apparent motive. Omensetter was the endless talk of the town because everything he did or didn’t do was an enigmatic pool of questions and suppositions. What they learned of Omensetter was that he was a strange, lucky fellow.  Is it possible to make mankind your hobby? What can you learn from such a hobby? Do you learn anything in the end? What’s it all worth?

Concrete - Thomas Bernhard

This is a novel about procrastination in its deepest form. Show me a person, a single person who has never procrastinated and I’ll beg that person to tell me why he’s never procrastinated. Then I will rack my brains trying to figure out how that is possible. To my ever-growing dismay, I related to Rudolph (the protagonist) because I too procrastinate. Hi I’m Christina and I’m a procrastinator. I mean well, but meaning well doesn’t move the world now does it? Did Beethoven mean well when he wanted to compose the magic that is String Quartet # 9 in C-Major, Opus 59/3 “Razumovsky”:IV.Allegro Molto? No. Man, this man was a genius! On a related tangent, the world can say Beethoven was a musical genius (and yes, he was a genius), because what he produced inspired awe, envy, admiration, and inspiration. I cannot write to any other genre of music but classical.  I recently heard a quote that appealed to me, and spoke volumes to me (so long as I apply myself): “you will succeed because most people are lazy.”

            I’m not sure which emotion Rudolph’s procrastination triggered more, anxiety or depression. He felt he needed to prepare everything before beginning to write about Mendelssohn Bartholdy. In a span of a decade, he gathered every possible written work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy and thought about his first sentence. Rudolph organized and reorganized his books with the utmost diligence; how they were stacked represented their significance to Bartholdy and what Rudolph planned to get from each book and in what order. What time of the day it was, how he felt, and where he was in order to begin his work also took careful planning. He asked his sister for company yet despised her presence and took it as malignant meddling on her part. He couldn’t write in an empty house, however, he couldn’t write with his sister in the house. He couldn’t write in Peiskam but he couldn’t write in Palma. He couldn’t write unless he had slept enough yet his anxiety wouldn’t let him sleep ‘til the wee hours of the morning. On one occasion he simply had to begin his work on an empty stomach at 4 o’clock in the morning. The problem was, he slept till after 5 o’clock and was hungry. He couldn’t eat with company but he didn’t want to eat alone.

            “Naturally we make the highest, the very highest demands of ourselves, completely leaving out of account human nature, which is after all not made to meet the highest demands. The world spirit, as it were, overestimates the human spirit” (Bernhard, 84). Is this true? Is human nature so inherently flawed that we’re fools for even setting lofty goals for ourselves and others? If this is true, then what’s the point? It seems to me that people of all walks of life are searching for ‘the point,’ as in the meaning of life and what one is supposed to do to get where one is supposed to be. Even if it’s true that in the elaborate scheme of things everything is pointless, why not have some fun, some motivation to do something pleasurable whilst we can? Why not create a purpose for ourselves that we want to pursue? Rudolph came from fabulous wealth. His attempts to begin working on Mendelssohn Bartholdy were not for the purpose of a livelihood, but for the purpose of his life. He finally discovered what moved him, music. He set out to write the most intellectual and superior piece about his favorite composer. How difficult is that?

The idea of shame is one that pervades the book. Rudolph believes his sister lives a shameful life because it’s all about making a profit. He feels ashamed that after 10 years of preparation and planning, no work has come to fruition. He’s privately ashamed of his anxiety.  While reading, I was wondering why shame was an emotion Bernhard kept going to. Was this a story about the pitfalls of having goal, even just one, but being too listless to accomplish anything? I don’t have an answer. If only Thomas Bernhard could answer this for me and put to rest my own anxiety!

Carpenter’s Gothic - William Gaddis

     With any good piece of fiction, it’s not what is possible, but what is plausible. Every character in this novel lived a life of quiet (and at times not so quiet) desperation. As you know, when we indulge in particularly strong emotions, we tend to act irrationally. Glee, desire, rage, grief, and desperation are some emotions that make that list. Gaddis created these characters that you can’t quite put one label on because they surprise you and do something totally opposite to their presumed nature. When I come across characters like these, I always wonder, did the author plan this? Did he just go with whatever happened? Can this surprise be explained? Is this surprise plausible? Most of the time and to my delight, the answer to that last question is yes.

      The men in this novel are hopeless wheeler-dealer types. I like the way this expression sounds, but I haven’t quite figured out what exactly it means. I suppose this expression applies to Billy, Paul, and McCandless. The evangelist Ude is an obvious sleazeball since his African mining/missionary mission is a total scam so I won’t delve into his character. The first three men mentioned are all desperate to escape and/or make their fortunes. In Billy’s case, how he went about trying to amass a fortune is the reason why he has to escape. Paul is so hapless, so disorganized, and so desperate he’s almost pitiable, if he weren’t such a horrible person. He’s a pseudo-Southerner who probably came out of the Vietnam War more racist than when he went in. McCandless is completely estranged from his wife (or ex-wife, Gaddis is ambiguous about that) and son. His life is a ticking time bomb because he knows political secrets and the subjects of these secrets know it. Beyond the ending of the book, I don’t think things pan out in any of their favors.

      I’ve heard of daddy issues, I’m sure you’ve heard of it too. Elizabeth (Liz) and her father did not have what could be described as a good father-daughter relationship, most likely because he barely acknowledged her existence. All his love went to his Jack Russell Terrier dogs. Liz’s self-esteem plunged to the point where she ardently wished she were one of his terriers, just so that then, he would love her. Her brother Billy wasn’t loved either, but he was disciplined in the same fashion as his father would treat a dog. Having one’s food placed in a dog bowl on the floor and forced to eat as dogs do would leave a mark on anyone’s psyche. And that it did, since Billy bitterly despised his belated miser of a father.

     This story would be terribly depressing were it not for the humour in the character’s interactions particularly those between Liz and Paul. This married couple spoke to each other every day, but they never heard what the other was saying. It’s like two completely unrelated conversations were happening at the same time. As I was reading, I thought to myself, I would very much like to see this story in a play. In my head I imagined that this pair’s frustrations about not being heard would reverberate all over the theater and everyone in the audience would come to hate Liz for being so passive, Paul for having his head lodged way up in his ass, to the point where someone would yell “for goodness sake, leave this person, this house, this goal and never look back!” I’d pay to see that.

     There are different editions of this same story, but I’m fascinated with the cover art of the penguin edition because I can’t quite tell what’s going on. I would guess that the person being held or pulled apart or tortured or worshiped is Liz and the three subjects surrounding supposed Liz are Paul, Billy, and McCandless. But then, whose on the bottom? Are they chanting, and if so, what?

Madame Bovary

     What do you dream of and is it attainable? If it’s not attainable, do you believe it ought to be? Of course you do, it’s your dream!  What would you do to turn things in your favor? Probably irrational things, but they wouldn’t seem irrational to you. No, the crazy things you would probably do to attain what you coveted would seem logical, even natural. After reading Madame Bovary, I asked myself what was crazier, Emma Bovary doing absolutely anything to attain what she wanted, or that what she coveted was a fantastical concoction of her preferred novelists and thus unattainable?

     I find the phrase ‘we are governed by reason’ to be a cliché, but I think it is said so many times because it brings people some comfort in thinking we are not slaves to our impulses. Comfort in thinking that we are not feeble in will; we have our logic and our wits about us and it is this brilliant reasoning that ultimately influences our decisions and actions. Sorry to reopen the box of unpleasant realizations, but I’ve noticed quite the contrary. When it comes to the tantalizing, there is almost no sound logic; the only objective is to acquire said target and you develop almost tunnel vision in your quest to possess it. As I previously mentioned, what Emma wanted was the stuff of many novelist’s imagination. In the novels Emma devoured, the characters were fabulously wealthy, had tumultuous passions, and indulged in all sorts of pleasures. People born as, becoming, or marrying wealthy aristocrats is real, now and then. However, the perception that being wealthy automatically equals a happy life is only an illusion created by an outsider, (someone not wealthy or poor). But for the insider, they have their own routines and disappointments to deal with. That embellished reality doesn’t exist beyond of an outsider’s imagination.

     Emma failed to realize that you can’t grasp at illusions because the perception is skewed and fleeting. Try grabbing your shadow; go on, I dare ya. Emma dealt with the lack of glamour in her life (being the daughter of a farmer and unmarried) by imagining that she would marry someone worldly and that she would finally know and embody what passion and ecstasy were. Charles Bovary seemed like a promising suitor (even though he was the only suitor) because he seemed mysterious (he was from another town), a competent doctor (he treated her father), and it was likely he would come into a fortune (because of his career). Too bad she couldn’t marry fantasy Charles. Within days of their exchanged vows, Emma had two realizations that could be thought of as an inevitable drowning; Charles would never and could never be the Charles of her imagination and she did not love him. She did not feel a portion of the passion she had read and longed for, for Charles, “and now she could not bring herself to believe that the uneventful life she was leading was the happiness of which she had dreamed” -Pt. I, Ch. VI.

    “At last she was going to know the joys of love, the fever of the happiness she had despaired of. She was entering a marvelous realm where all would be passion, ecstasy, rapture: she was in the midst of an endless blue expanse, scaling the glittering heights of passion; everyday life had receded, and lay far below, in the shadows between those peaks” - Pt. II, Ch. IX. Emma was naïve and foolish and for that I pity her. I pity her but not children because children recover quickly; one disappointment will not hinder them from hoping for something else. Emma carried all her disappointments in her heart with a twisted sense of pride; letting them go was not something even to consider. Since she couldn’t hold or experience ecstasy, passion, bliss, and rapture, she would hold resentment, ambition, disappointment, and rage in its place as what would keep her feeling.

 
    Emma had lovers outside of her marriage, bought every luxury she was presented with on credit, had a servant tend to her child so she was free to sit in her room and have melancholic episodes about the magnificent life that was unjustly denied her, and a clumsy but adoring and indulging husband. Pity Emma would never be happy; she could never be because no image or moment of happiness would ever compare to her read perception of what happiness was supposed to be. In the very act of having a lover, which she thought promised bliss, she despaired that she or Rodolphe and later Leon would grow tired of their passion, that it wouldn’t bring her ecstasy every time they met, that her lover wouldn’t be the lover of her imagination, or that it would end. While despairing on those possibilities, she couldn’t focus on what was supposed to bring her elation in that moment.

War Trash - Ha Jin

Two things are probably going to happen when you hear a war story: you either forget about it three seconds after you’ve heard it, or you personalize it so that you can empathize. Sometimes you don’t want to feel the gravity and the horror and the despair that such a tale can evoke, so you dismiss it. It’s easy because nothing about that story, not a character’s fears or hopes or pain is relatable to you. Well tough break kid, because Ha Jin’s War Trash forces its reader to partake in the protagonist Yu Yuan/Feng’s miseries and hopes. Yes, he has two names, the first was his real name and the second was a fake so that he could hide his identity and survive.  Feng is someone who refuses to lose his humanity, despite the inhumanity he’s subjected to. It’s because of that humanity and decency that this story is not another anonymous bloody tale, but a pseudo personal memoir (because this story is not the author’s own).

            I have never been in the midst of a war, so how could I possibly begin to imagine the anguish and the agony these people experienced? The story is written memoir style, but it’s actually Ha Jin’s father’s tale. And yes, the Korean War actually did happen, so listen up! I’m confident about the accuracy of the political details, and I’m thinking that the violence described most likely happened.  I have never seen a battalion of wriggly maggots slowly feed on someone’s leg wound nor have I stood in an open field littered with rotting corpses and gagged on the putrid air. I have never had to risk my life just to pass some political affiliation test nor have I been tattooed against my will. I kid you not, the simplicity of Jin’s words paint such a strong and graphic picture that you read the words and think, if only momentarily, that you’re picturing one of your own memories.

While War Trash inevitably mentions the politics that fueled the Korean War (1950-53), Jin focuses on Feng’s perspective as a reluctant soldier with no political loyalties. According to Feng, he wanted nothing to do with all that ‘political nonsense’ that drove men and nations apart.  Actually, I think using the word ‘soldier’ to describe Feng is a stretch, since he didn’t think of himself as a real soldier; he didn’t want to fight. He was educated, kind, afraid, and compassionate. He was enlisted as a ‘volunteer’ in Mao’s communist army, though volunteer is also a bit of a stretch. He was an able-bodied man in China, so he had to fight, end of story. Plenty of soldiers became willing martyrs for Communist China because they wholeheartedly believed in the politics they were fighting for. Feng admired their bravery and the convictions that fueled it all the more because he knew he did not possess that courage.

There was a particular episode that Feng spoke about with something like scorn, which I agreed with. Many diehard Chinese communist POW’s in an American camp wanted to give proper respect to their flag day (October 9) by raising the Chinese flag. The People’s Republic of China under Mao was only three years old, so I suppose the idea of freedom and patriotic glory was still something of a novelty. Though that patriotism never left, but it wouldn’t be fair to accuse only the Chinese of being patriotic/nationalistic; it’s something every country in the world is afflicted with. So these soldiers stole a piece of white nylon, cut themselves so that their blood would paint the ‘flag’ crimson red and fought to their deaths in order to raise it on Flag Day. Feng thought to himself that it seemed superfluous that these men were dying over a piece of nylon cloth. Yes it was symbolic, but in the end, flag or any other picture, it was just a piece of cloth.

While a T.A for an undergraduate English class, I asked the students participate in a character analysis of Feng and I got a broad scale of opinions, ranging from he’s very humane to he’s selfish. As I previously wrote, he was not a soldier; he did not want to fight, he was not blinded by political party affiliations, and biggest trait of all, he was kind. If anything, he was a genuine teacher because he did his best to share his knowledge of the English language and other skills he had with anyone who was interested in learning. I thought this character to be human – afraid, brave, smart, anxious, generous, loving, and traumatized, basically a character worth reading. 

Infinite Jest

I picked up this book because I liked Wallace’s literary voice and that was enough for me to pick up this 1000+ page book. It did not take me five months to finish reading Infinite Jest. I started a master’s program this past summer, and my ability to juggle multiple projects had to be rewired. Sorry if I caused you some angst, dear reader. Rest assured, I’m back and determined to chat about one of my loves, literature.

In my last two posts, I declared that I was struggling to gain momentum in my reading; I felt confused by the many and different characters and their situations. Also, I’d have to pause my reading and go look up a word I didn’t know quite frequently, but I appreciated that.  I started thinking that this novel was like a Quentin Tarantino film – the story would involve seven characters with entirely different lives that somehow connected towards the middle or at the end. One of the many accomplishments of Wallace is his ability to find the voice of a character and roll with it. Within a few pages, the reader already has a good understanding of a character’s ambitions, reasons, traumas, desires and possibly fears. I know next to nothing about Canadian separatism, Canadian patriotism, a secret society of wheelchair-bound patriotic assassins, tennis, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, suicide, and film theory. These are some of the topics affecting the protagonists. There are others, like familial estrangement, handicaps, bizarre phobias, seduction, addiction, blackmail, and loyalty, but the topics from the first list interested me more because of my lack of knowledge of them. I figure, even if I truly abhor a subject, I’m going to learn something from reading about it. That something might even be useful for a future conversation about the very thing I abhor, or if I’m a contestant on a quizzical game show and am asked about the thing I abhor. It could very well happen.

I think writing the ending of a story as its beginning is a difficult technique because now the author has to write something so inspiring/amazing/shocking so that the reader can temporarily forget the ending. Someone looses his marbles during a critical life and career- determining interview and though I don’t know why this person went mental, I pity him. I’m also terribly curious as to why. Slowly my understanding of the social and self-pressure this person has makes me say, ‘well, now I see. He desperately needed an outlet that wouldn’t make his saliva glands produce an absurd amount of spit.

A few ideas resonated with me throughout my reading and continue today, long after I’ve completed reading Infinite Jest. The title itself is composed of two words full of profound wisdom. I think accepting those words together; ‘infinite’ and ‘jest’ can alter a person’s perspective in one of three ways. It can make you a nihilist, religious, or mostly complacent. A nihilist is someone who genuinely rejects customary religion and/or morals. I also understand it to mean someone who just acts, without regard to consequences, because it’s all the same in the end. Maybe this definition is extreme, but it’s what comes to my mind. The second path I thought of was a religious one. Perhaps I’m using the term religious too loosely. What I mean is, someone spiritual in search of unearthly happiness, a higher purpose and/or being. I think one could follow that doctrine under the guide of an established religion, or on a solitary and completely personal journey. To such a person, everything in this world is a phase; therefore there is no need to completely submerge in the trivial, the banal, the exciting, and the thrilling of this world, because it will pass. It’s all ephemeral.

Finally, the complacent individual accepts what he cannot change, and maybe strives to better the things he can. For example, I have come to grips with the fact that I will not be the brilliant humanitarian scientist who will find a cure for AIDS because I am not apt for biology, or any of the sciences, really. What I do want to do, and I’m doing all I can to do so, is to teach/discuss/learn about literature. I’m currently in an English master’s program catered for literature, but I don’t’ think it means that upon its completion, I will have “mastered literature.” Is that even possible?! I will always keep learning and reading and learning and reading. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.