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2003/02/16

More than four years later, I still aspire to write like Chesterton.

[The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton]

Oh, and The Man Who Was Thursday is really an absolutely wonderful book. For example:

And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.

(It has just occurred to me that it may not be self-evident why this particular sentence is so wonderful, but it’s too much trouble trying to explain it. Also, explaining things tend to take the flavor out of them. Let it suffice to say that I read this sentence and felt delighted, though it was indeed surreal and slightly frightening, “nightmare” that it is.) I have decided that one of my life’s goals will be to write like G.K. Chesterton.

Posted 07 December 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

2003/02/06

I still continue to have contradictory expectations of Asian-American authors. I have yet to come across one that has managed to say something new about the so-called “Asian-American experience” while still remaining meaningful to me. Although thinking more on this issue, I think I would have preferred it if Chang-rae Lee had written about an entirely different subject altogether; it’s the fact that he chooses to write about an Asian man in American society without really writing about immigrant life (at least in a form that is recognizable to me). Perhaps Ha Jin’s new novel is more along the lines of what I’ve been subconsciously expecting.

[A Gesture Life, by Chang-rae Lee]

Started reading Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life, which made me feel slightly betrayed, since he’s writing about a Japanese man who “fell in love with a Korean comfort woman during World War II.” It’s all very well to explore controversial issues, but he’s a fellow Korean, and irrationally, I wish he’d show more nationalism. I know, I know, it’s art, and therefore, we durst not argue with whatever the dictates of his artistic conscience demand. (I like the sound of that, “durst not.”) Still…

Also, it may be just me, but I find his writing incredibly dull. There’s an Ishiguro-esque quality to his style, but Ishiguro makes the content of his writing interesting, the nostalgic and wistful descriptions lingering over faded, yet beautiful things. The nostalgic and wistful descriptions here linger over an ordinary middle-class American life, albeit that of a Japanese immigrant. It’s just…tiresome. I think maybe the style itself could potentially be parodic, or at least evocative of modern Japanese writers, but still, I don’t enjoy this story. (Then I feel somewhat guilty, because Chang-rae Lee is probably the only famous Korean-American contemporary writer. But who says Asian-Americans should enjoy Asian-American writing? I didn’t like Native Speaker much either.) What’s odd is that my friends and I have criticized most Asian-American writing for dwelling too much on the “oh, I rebelled against my roots but I can never escape them” theme, but for some reason, this is exactly what I dislike about Chang-rae Lee. Not enough about Korea, or of Korean heritage. I want him to distill the essence of my Korean-American existence, in the exact manner of that cliched phrase. I want to see him muse about speaking the language, about wearing hanbok, about passing by “Koreatown” in Flushing, about sappy “trot” music that the grandparents love singing. I don’t want to hear of a wholly American life, where the man has an American wife and a normal job, all of which is falling apart, but in a typically American way. I want to read about “feeling caught between two worlds” when the writer is a Korean-American, and therefore like me. How silly is that? A shared nationality still allows room for infinite variations.

Posted 06 December 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

2003/02/03

I don’t even know I’d call the book “ingenious” and “innovative” anymore. It’s certainly well-written though.

[The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen]

I’ve finished Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, which I concede is creative and ingenious and innovative, etc., etc., etc., but it was difficult to enjoy. I mean, considering that it’s about a midwestern American family, going through various stages of midlife crises and/or depression, it couldn’t be further detached from the world I live in. I suppose for the critics it captured the essence of being American and suffering the changes in ideas and ideals and ideologies, but as an Asian-American, who has lived on the East Coast all her life (and yes, those nine years in Houston counted as East Coast), it couldn’t be more alien.

One would expect that reading fantasy would, well, be escapist, and yes, it is to a certain degree. On the other hand, all the books I really enjoy are probably closest to me in terms of mental familiarity. Even contemporary mainstream books like The Lovely Bones focus on something I can relate to myself, like family life. The Corrections has very few chances for that kind of connection. I don’t understand these characters very well, and it’s hard to experience their world through their minds. And, well, the fixation on fecal matter and urine may have been thematically important, but was it necessary to describe the smell of rancid urine? I tend to have overly vivid reading experiences, and I nearly threw up on those particular passages. Sheesh.

Posted 03 December 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: ,

2002/12/31

[Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter]

Further progress in Gödel, Escher, Bach has proven delightful. There was this dialogue called “Ant Fugue”, which compared anthills to brains in a rather charming way. The dialogue preceding this one was called “Prelude…”. Makes you wonder at the cleverness of the author in finding an analogy to address a subject that also provides a pun like “Prelude…Ant Fugue”. Oh, and in between there was this pun Lierre de Fourmi, a fictional anthill who discovered the converse, so to speak, of Fermat’s Last Theorem. That n^a + n^b = n^c has an infinite number of solutions when n=2, but no solutions when n>2. This is of course a Diophantine equation, and Lierre de Fourmi supposedly discovered his Well-Tested Conjecture when reading Arithmetica by Di of Antus, mirroring the way Fermat thought up his theorem while reading Arithmetica by Diophantus. Even more clever that one can create such a pun on Diophantus’ name to reflect all the other ant puns going around…Lierre de Fourmi by the way means “bridge of ants”, which reflects an actual behavior of ants that illustrates Hofstadter’s whole point about anthills. It was really amusing, to say the least.

Posted 02 December 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

2002/12/09

I have no idea what I meant here, but I still remember enjoying this book.

[The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, by A.S. Byatt]

I read a collection of fairy tales by A.S. Byatt over the weekend, including The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, which I liked, even though one would think I had very little in common with the protagonist. The way that reading stories sort of forces you outside of stories and yet trying to create a narrative out of your own life…it’s hard to explain, but it “resonated” with me.

Posted 01 December 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

2002/12/05

The brilliance of Ishiguro: to take a flawed character who does terrible things not out of villainy but simple weakness and make him sympathetic. My generalizations about WWII are due to my world history and English teachers.

[The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro]

I finished The Remains of the Day, the Ishiguro book, and it was really wonderful. I think Ishiguro did continue with his “can you trust the narrator?” tactics, but it was more along the lines of self-delusion in memories, in order to forget what you don’t want to remember. But what really struck me was this sorrow that pervades the entire story, the butler who is desperately trying to convince himself that his life of service to Lord Darlington was worthy of “dignity.” It was rather beautiful, especially at the end, when he finally is able to admit what he refused to admit before and then achieves a kind of peace with himself. I suppose to someone else, it could seem a bit sappy, and perhaps even transparent, but I thought it was so elegantly done. Really beautiful, liked it even more than When We Were Orphans.

It’s true though, not simply for this butler or those of his social standing in England. World War II was horribly devastating, the end of idealism, the huge turning point for Western civilization (and I suppose the rest of the world as well). World War I was pretty awful too, but I think it was World War II that broke the Western world’s original faith in man, that repudiated any belief in humanism. Admittedly, the trend had started before the war (thinking Freud and Darwin, of course), but somehow the sheer brutality of that war made it real. Suddenly, we weren’t anymore the enlightened rational beings that we wanted to be. The advent of our postmodern cynicism, I suppose. But growing up in the world of my parents, who were born during this turning point, I can’t help sharing the old butler’s nostalgia and bewilderment.

Posted 01 December 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

2002/12/03

Needless to say, the unreliable narrator has become a much more familiar convention to me, but I still admire the way that Ishiguro explores the layers of self-deception we use to protect ourselves.

[When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro]

What’s cool and disturbing about Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans (another book, which I read during the summer) is that he gradually leads the reader into more and more unbelievable events until we’re forced to doubt the narrator’s ability to tell the truth, or rather, realize the layers of self-delusion and deception that clouds the narrator’s own vision, and consequently our own. Rather nice, considering how we usually trust even first-person narrative to be reliable, and to have that turn completely upside-down is a very upsetting experience.

Posted 30 November 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Anne Bishop, Julian Barnes, Jo Walton

The Invisible Ring, by Anne Bishop: My level of tolerance for Anne Bishop’s prose (can you believe she actually makes a catchphrase out of “balls and sass”?) has decreased over the years, but The Invisible Ring still makes an indulgent and mindless read. I finished the book in a day, over three train rides. Jared is not as intriguing as Daemon, alas, and Lia is cut out of the same cookie-cutter mold as all of Bishop’s supposedly strong, spunky heroines (who are nonetheless kind of infuriatingly helpless and dependent on the males in their lives). The villains of the plot, Dorothea and Krelis, are so two-dimensional that they’re actually kind of amusing. It was a great trashy novel, and I enjoyed the book.

Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes: My first exposure to Julian Barnes, and I’m completely smitten. Initially, the book sounds like the sort of narrative nonfiction that I enjoy reading; the first-person narrator being a sort of companion in the exploration of the life of Flaubert, masquerading as an observer but not as a character or subject of the novel. But of course, Geoffrey Braithwaite is a character in his own right, though he tries to avoid it, and we see him let slip maddening little details, which don’t fully cohere into a complete picture even when he gets drunk and grows unusually candid with the reader. We do piece together the story, Braithwaite’s story, in between his recounting and retelling of Flaubert’s life, but there’s always that lingering uncertainty from receiving a story through apocrypha. Of course, there’s also a peculiar sense of satisfaction in it as well—like constructing an image glimpsed through the cracks or between the bars—which appeals to the postmodernist within me.

It soon becomes clear that Braithwaite’s fascination with Flaubert is more than literary appreciation or enthusiasm; his obsession has a focus on adultery, on that most notorious Flaubertian creation, Emma Bovary, on authenticity, on the two parrots. Asking who is the real Flaubert is really asking who is the real Braithwaite (and perhaps also who was the real Ellen as well). I loved the three different chronologies of Flaubert’s life: one recording his achievements and successes, one recording his tragedies and failures, and one last one made up entirely of quotes from his writing. How chameleon a single individual can be! Our image of them perhaps no more authentic than a parrot’s imitation of their voice.

But all such lofty thoughts aside, the simple fact of his fixation on Flaubert is what makes the book appealing to me. Who knew that Flaubert was such an interesting individual? In corollary, if I’d realized before just how wonderful his prose was, I would have made more effort to finish reading Madame Bovary from where I left off so many years before. (I’ve since been inspired to check it out from the local library.) Also, I had especial sympathy for Braithwaite’s emotional defensiveness of Flaubert, his dissection of the writer’s flaws and his equally careful defense of them. I spend a lot of time criticizing books and authors in writing and in conversation, but I am equally prone to jump to their defense when they are criticized by others. Perhaps it’s because no book I’ve read has been entirely worthless: even those I’ve hated or despised have left their imprint on me and have become touchstones for my opinions and reactions, and of course, the most frivolous novel still provides a few hours of pleasure, if nothing else.

Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton: What a clever twist on the mannerpunk novel! It seems to be the fashion to write fantasy set during the Regency or Victorian period (or perhaps I’ve just gravitated towards those novels), but I don’t think any author’s gone so far as to write about Victorian dragons before. I’m reminded not so much of Jane Austen but of Charles Dickens (e.g., the casual cruelty of Daverak to his servants and social inferiors, young Avan trying to make his way in the city, the pseudo-industrial setting of a countryside being overtaken by railroads, the seeds of socialist consciousness). Walton cites Trollope for her inspiration, which makes me think that I ought to read Framley Parsonage someday. Some particularly interesting twists: Victorian prudishness being biologically enforced by female dragons changing color after they’ve been in close contact with a male, the Old Religion (equivalent to the Catholic Church, I suppose) being a vehicle of socialist reform, body size as equal measure of prosperity as wealth, and of course, that beginning scene that I’ve heard mentioned in every review of this book, children and other relatives devouring their dead father’s body as part of their inheritance. Strangely, the eating of dragonflesh—should I call it cannibalism?—didn’t shock me that much, partly because the dragons themselves thought it perfectly natural. (A testament to how well Walton thought out this society.)

Posted 29 November 2007 † troisroyaumes § book log ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , , , ,

2002/12/01

I didn’t understand feminism in high school and found it irritating. Much has changed since then, of course. It’s odd because despite my seemingly negative reaction to Byatt here, Possession won its place in my memory as one of my favorite books in contemporary literature. I also find my “critique” of contemporary literary fiction extremely amusing in hindsight because now I’m notorious among my friends for my love of referential writing.

[Possession: A Romance, by A.S. Byatt]

I’ve spent an entire day on my math homework. Or, rather. eight hours, since I need to subtract the time I spent finishing Possession. That, by the way, was a rather good book, though it made me feel a bit irritable because it had all these ongoing motifs, which I was not bothering to remember. I mean, it was meant to be analyzed, and I wasn’t reading for analysis, just pleasure. Also, it had so many explicit themes that I felt I was grappling with a mass of thorns. Byatt’s reflections on the essentially sterile nature of self-analysis, which pervades a post-Freudian society and more specifically the academic world, as opposed to poetry, self-expression and creativity, were beautifully and rather movingly woven into the story. But I didn’t like all the wrestling with feminism, and how to deal with women’s sexuality, and how this sexuality and creativity poses a threat to the masculine ego, and how, and how, and how, etc., etc., etc. Yuck. I’ve never really seen myself as a girl. When I think of myself, I don’t think, “female,” I think “intelligent human being.” And from an academic point of view, exploring mythological feminine images like the Sphinx or the Morrigan is all very fascinating, but just a tad tiresome after a while, and when you’re reading for pleasure, you really don’t want to care about things like that. Gender is a very minor part of my self-identity! I don’t care that male authors have predominantly male protagonists, because I identify with those male characters! Sheesh.

But just in terms of storyline, Possession was really wonderfully done. Byatt, I believe, actually composed all the poetry she “quotes” herself (unless Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte really do exist…though I’m pretty sure they don’t.) I’m rather impressed with her command of Victorian language. I really would like to write like that, capitalizing random nouns and sticking in dashes instead of commas.

Nevertheless, there’s just a hint of smugness in all of contemporary “literary” writing, something left over from the modernists, I think. “Let’s see how many allusions to high-brow intellectual thought we can embed in one sentence,” that kind of thing. When T.S. Eliot does it, I feel awed and humbled, but when Byatt does it, I feel rather irritated. Probably because when I read The Waste Land, I was reading it for self-edification, but when I read Possession, it’s simply and only for wasting time. Biased, aren’t I? Nevertheless, there is this impression of seals jumping through hoops. I mean, Ursula K. Le Guin manages to be as profound, if not more, with a much simpler, much less convoluted, much less referential writing style. The point should be to communicate the theme to the reader in a subtle and carefully crafted way, not to impress the reader with your excellent education. Of course, I am impressed. But it does make me feel a bit irritated.

Posted 29 November 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

2002/11/08

I took a course on Bach in my last semester of college because of this book.

[Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter]

By the way, there was another really clever dialogue in the GEB, which I read on Wednesday. It was titled, “A Little Harmonic Labyrinth,” which was a Bach composition that modulated continually until it ended on a key that was not the tonic. However, due to the constant modulation, the listener would have been deceived into believing that it was the tonic. Meanwhile, the dialogue itself was a story within a story within a story within a story, etc. and once the innermost story was finished, they would “pop” back up using a “Popping-Out Tonic” (see the pun, tonic?) and return the story before. But because there were so many embedded stories, only the careful reader would notice that the dialogue ended in a story within the largest story, that is, that it didn’t really return to the original starting point at all, just like Bach’s piece did not return to the original key. The next chapter then talked about recursion and how recursive definitions can create infinite loops and gave examples like Fibonacci numbers and other very cool ideas. I’d go into more detail if Hofstadter didn’t explain it all so well—if you’re curious, go read the GEB for yourself.

Posted 27 November 2007 † troisroyaumes § memory lane ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,