The Painted Veil by Maugham

Absolutely fucking dreck. Not to be read or paid for under any circumstances. Horrible and inexcusable.

Project

I'm rereading or reading for the first time all of the classics I can get my hands on. First on deck is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I'd completely forgotten how easy and conversational Hugo's writing style is. Despite the 160 years separating him from me, in reading his novel I can easily imagine myself sitting across the table from a story-telling friend with an open bottle of claret between us. Of course, him being french, he would no doubt sneer at my choice.

He also has a way of describing characters, their motivations, and the sources of their flaws, that is dear to my sociological heart. With his quick wit and sympathetic writing, even knowing the ending he has in store, I'll no doubt be stunned by the sudden twist toward tragedy.

I need to find the source of this quote

Roughly paraphrased: People will always try to convince you you are old. Don't let them.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

I was finally motivated to finish this novel last night. Then I finished The Book Thief. I'll write about it later.

I generally avoid reading war stories, whether real or fictional or a combination of the two. I feel like an intruder in a realm that I don't understand. In part, I think, this is because as readers we submerge ourselves in the environment of our books, however strange and illogical those environs are. We feel, or understand, or experience. When it comes to war stories this sort of submersion feels like the worst form of cheating somehow. I'm not going to understand by reading a book and there's a danger that I will think that I understand what I do not.

Perhaps because of this fear of submersion, I tend to be more greatly affected by those war stories that don't describe too deeply, that say a great deal in a few simple words. The most painful book I've ever read- Levi's Survival in Auschwitz is the clearest example of this. Primo Levi's memoir was filled with simple sentences like "Everyone on that train died in the camps." (not an exact quote) that don't try to describe the feeling of carrying that knowledge around forever. They just state and force the reader to react genuinely to the information itself.

Tim O'Brien often does this as well. But he also talks about this problem repeatedly from the perspective of the writer, struggling again and again with a story in the hopes that this time it will convey experience. I suspect that it's an impossibility to do that with a personal war story, but his efforts matter.

I also found myself deeply engaged by his writings of 'truths that never happened'. Things that, while factually wrong, are true in a deeper way. I'm going to be chewing on that thought for a while.

I've noticed that books in the last few years have become increasingly unstructured. Stories are often told out of chronological order, with no narrative flow, and cease to be stories at all. In general this annoys me. It feels like an extremely artificial device.

I can't accuse O'Brien of being trendy, since The Things They Carried was released around 1990, and I think that if this device does have a natural home in literature, it is in the realm of war stories. In fact, I think my first exposure to it was probably in Catch-22. War seems paradoxically chaotic and repetitive and while war might be declared and victory might be declared, I think it's hard to force it into a standard narrative arc. I also suspect that war doesn't end for soldiers when it ends for those of us sitting on the sidelines. It is probably revisited again and again by the soldier in memories out of the sequence of time. So maybe it's appropriate that we experience it that way as well.

While I wont criticize O'Brien's non-linear narrative, what I will criticize is his overuse of repetition. It's a powerful device and should be used sparingly, not in almost every other chapter. I felt assaulted by it sometimes, like O'Brien was standing over me with a giant baseball bat and whacking me on the head screaming "Get it?!? Get it?!?". Please, give your readers a little more credit.

Some Kid

Some kid standing on a street corner was passing out fliers. I figured it was for a fraternity party and that I'd be allowed to pass by unnoticed. When I got closer he shoved one of rectangular blue papers at me. I mumbled a thanks and glanced down at it. It was an advertisement for classes to increase your reading speed.


I'm using it as a book-mark in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. It's taken me months to read the short book- maybe I do need to register for those classes.