Stardate: I Can Do This -- A Classic Romance

Some long years back, when I was around twelve or thirteen, I went on an airplane trip to Philadelphia. It was my first airplane ride ever. At the airport, I got the only book that didn't look scarily modern. I think I knew it was A Classic Romance, which was a draw, but, for some reason, I never read it.

It's probably good that I didn't, because Wuthering Heights is a complicated mess of terrible people and terrible actions, and I'm not sure if I would have understood it then. Maybe I would have, but I'm glad I didn't. 

I want to suggest that I might have fallen in love with Heathcliff, but I think even me at thirteen would have known better. Heathcliff is a creepy, creepy man.

From watching the Merle Oberon/Laurence Olivier movie, I thought I knew what the story was about. Little did I know that it was even more horrible than the movie! Like, ten times worse than the movie! How about that. It's true: everyone is terrible. Heathcliff is awful - at first, understandably so, but then he just goes off the rails and it's pathetic and a bit scary. (When did people start romanticizing him? I can understand some characters, but Heathcliff? His sad backstory is not nearly sad enough to warrant his later behavior.) Edgar? Kind of pathetic, but sweet... but also still a little creepy. Isabelle? Terrible. Joseph? TERRIBLE. Nelly is the only decent person in this novel, and even she has her moments of questionableness.

I had a whole essay on Cathy. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I read this (in August, ha) and I've forgotten most of it. Suffice it to say, Cathy is the most complex character in the novel, and while I still think she's an awful person - an awful, manipulative, petulant, selfish person - I also think there's a lot to explain it, more so than there is for Heathcliff. Cathy is a tragic figure, wild and untaught, and, ultimately, even if she sort of deserves what she gets, we still feel sad. Because she also sort of didn't.

All those names and family connections were a monster to get through, let me tell you. My southern skills at family trees should have made it easier, but it was really rough in the beginning. No one is judging if you have to map it out for yourself to remember, especially when children start getting named after the previous generation.

Is it worth it, for all the awfulness and the tangle of names? Absolutely. Brontë's language is intricate and descriptive, as plaintive and as wild as her most famous character. You'll be in for the long haul for this lengthy, dense book, but it's worth it. It's definitely worth it.

(If you don't put "Wuthering Heights" on after you finish this book, either the original Kate Bush version or a cover - my favorite is Hayley Westenra's - I will judge you. Hard.)

Stardate: It's Not So Bad Yet -- A Book I Actually Did Read In School (And Many Times After)

Hey, guys. It's time for me to make an insufferable confession. I read every single book I was supposed to read in school. It's true. I'm an arrogant little nerd driven by perfectionism and a slightly obsessive need for completion. However, this is not to say that I enjoyed all or even most of them. Sadly, I hated most of them, or at least resented them for not being much fun. There is one, though, a Book That I Actually Did Read For School and have since come back to over and over and over.

Cyrano de Bergerac is a masterpiece. I really approach this review with fear and trembling because, of all books, Cyrano deserves a great review.

Cyrano de Bergerac, the character, is a magnetic character, a wonderful person who is simultaneously a fascinating, flawed character. How often do you see a character who is both good in the moral and the technical sense? I can probably count them on my fingers. He's brave, generous, selfless, loving, prideful, reckless, brilliant, melodramatic - and we can never forget his inferiority complex the size of France. I've read a couple translations of Cyrano at this point, and none of them ever disappoint in capturing Cyrano's voice, his mesmerizing, enchanting, blood-pounding voice. I don't think you can ruin Cyrano. He's too strong a presence for that.

The story is simple, straightforward - ugly boy loves a beautiful girl, beautiful girl loves a beautiful boy, ugly boy helps beautiful but rather slow boy woo the beautiful girl, girl and boy marry, ugly boy is, as usual, the dream wingman but ultimately left alone, romantically speaking. And then a bit more, but in case no one's read it yet, I won't say anymore.

I see a lot of people insulting Roxanne and Christian, but stop! Don't do that! Let the characters breathe. See them as people. Roxanne isn't vapid, shallow, selfish - she's a girl in love, a girl who also loves her cousin. Cyrano hides his love well! She couldn't know. She has beautiful lines, and she's no doormat love interest. That scene where she rides into the soldiers' camp to bring them food and cheer? She's incredible! And Christian - poor Christian. Maybe his speeches pale in comparison to Cyrano making up and reciting an impromptu poem at a stubborn actor, but stop comparing him. Listen to how honest he is. Do you ever doubt that he truly loves Roxanne? I can't. He's too straightforward, too sincere. And he's a sweetheart, and brave in his own way. (Also, the utter hilarity of his 'nose' scene when Cyrano's trying to tell a story. What a kid.)

The less we say about the final scene, the better. I don't have enough kleenex on hand to take care of the soppy, teary mess I'll become.

Cyrano de Bergerac is the kind of literature I'd call a gateway drug. Want to get someone into the classics? Bypass the 400-page Dickens and Austen novels, put down the Faulkner and - yes, though my heart breaks - even the Shakespeare. Give someone Cyrano (probably the Penguin edition - great readability). It's simple, brief, and beautiful - utterly beautiful. 

6/3/15 - A Book Over 100 Years Old

I come to you bearing news of a story that most of us have probably only experienced through film: The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, published in 1908, which gives me just enough room to review it for the Book Over 100 Years Old challenge.

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(Isn't that the most adorable cover? I want this edition.)

Like I said, most of us, at least the 'us' who are around my age, are probably more familiar with Ratty and Toad and Mole through the Disney double-feature, Ichabod and Mr. Toad. It's a wonderful little movie. I also saw some animated version of the whole book when I was very young, but it scared the crap out of me. Too realistic. I'd probably enjoy it now because it seemed more faithful to the book, which, as it turns out, is precious.

Wind&Willows is very much a product of its time. If you've never read any novels from around the turn of the century, this is a good one to start with. It's got animals doing human things (around and with humans, no less!) like a children's story, but it's also got some pretty beautiful scenes. The chapter entitled "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" is especially attention-grabbing. 

It's an easy book to read because it's so... well, charming. It's got a bit of everything. How do you not like a book where a Toad drives a motorcar like a maniac? Where, interspersed with Toad's drama, is an episodic unfolding of the idyllic life of a Mole and a Water Rat's friendship? What about a reenactment of Odysseus's return and subsequent routing of the suitors - when Odysseus is actually a delinquent and very naughty Toad?

Meanwhile, under the shenanigans and weasel-beating and the occasional comedy of animal manners, Grahame has a few nuggets of thought to pass on to the reader. What's the meaning of home? When's the time to leave home and when's the time to stay? How do nature and civilization play together? They're never stated outright, but the undercurrents of conflict and questioning are there. It's enhanced by the playfulness of the rest of the story. Somehow, these subtexts are easier to take - they're even lovely - when it's a Water Rat pondering them.

But on the whole, Wind&Willows is a delightful, lighthearted romp through some river country in England, played out by sophisticated animals who may sometimes have too much fun with motorcars and riverboats. 

5/26/15 - A Pulitzer Prize-winning Book

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Can you believe that this is my first Toni Morrison book? And I call myself an English major.

Beloved is, unexpectedly for me, a ghost story. I never thought that was the kind of thing that Toni Morrison wrote. Then again, I was never really sure what Toni Morrison wrote, which says more about my sad lack of awareness than anything else. Still, that sad lack of awareness made for a very powerful, attention-grabbing experience with Beloved.

I said in my brief Goodreads review that I'm not sure if this is the kind of book that's appropriate to say you liked. How do you 'like' a book like Beloved? Does that mean you like books about racial violence, about the murder of children, about fragments of a fragment of a culture? Don't get me wrong - this is a good book. Beloved is a great book. Sethe is a modern-day mythic heroine somewhere on the level of Antigone or Penelope, while she at the same time is one of the most truly human protagonists I've ever read. The other characters, while never reaching Sethe's transcendent level, are engaging, mesmerizing in their strength and fragility: Denver, Paul D, Beloved of course, and the others.

But what these characters go through, and knowing how much of their story comes from history, makes it impossible to say that I like this book. It might be different if it were a speculative story, if the torture and the dehumanization were tools for the story goal to be pursued and gained, tools for character development. But this is a story about the slavery, the torture and the dehumanization, and while it is also about the people who struggled against and occasionally overcame that, it makes it difficult to really assess my reaction to it.

So I think the best way to assess my reaction to it is to take myself out of the equation completely and deal with the book itself. Beloved is a good book; it's a great book, about a worthwhile subject, told in the most masterfully controlled and yet rightly out-of-control emotion and passion of any author. Read it. It's difficult, but read it.