My rage at Culvert seems judgmental to me now and perhaps also a little excessive, but I can tell (since these are my own words) that the anger also stems from my resentment towards my adolescent peers who thought that the source of all the problems in the world came from authority and that everything would be solved if we could simply do whatever we wanted.

[Tales of the Long Bow, by G.K. Chesterton]
[Babel Tower, by A.S. Byatt]

Also from “The Unobtrusive Traffic of Captain Pierce”:

The over-powering charm which pigs exercise upon us at a certain time of life; when we hear their trotters in our dreams and their little curly tails twine about us like the tendrils of the vine—

Prepare yourselves for an incoherent rant. I’ve been reading Babel Tower and Babbletower, the latter of which is the book-within-a-book inside the former. Culvert, the “visionary” of a utopia where everyone is free and there are no servants or masters and people can pursue their own pleasures, is the most ridiculous and stupid excuse for a sensualist I’ve ever seen. Why not be honest and say directly, “I want to have sex”? Why does he have to say that he’s emancipating mankind from oppression? I mean, do poverty and wretchedness disappear just because this group of rich, spoiled brats have now decided they will do whatever they want without any regard for the rules? I know Byatt wrote it as a criticism, but oh, did she succeed all too well in making me hopping mad.

Culvert proposes (idiot that he is) that they should engage in dramatic performances that represent their “new social order” on a regular schedule. But what if everyone decides to follow their own desires and refuse to put on any play whatsoever? And why doesn’t he just say, “I want to go watch an orgy every week”? And that whole, “let’s preach universal tolerance, but we want to murder the colonel because he has ‘blood on his hands’” incident was even more infuriating. If they are supposed to follow their instincts and live in perfect harmony, what on earth are they supposed to do if they have a secret homicidal maniac in their midst? After all, the would-be murderer only fulfills his desire by cutting someone’s throat. I am not speaking of murder that comes from anger or malice, but the sheer love of violence that is the one instinct of which these inhabitants of La Tour Bruyarde refuse to speak. (I think they all sink into a pit of sadomasochism later in the book. Serves them right.)

I really despise Culvert. I don’t even hate him. He irritates me like a fly I want to squash but can’t because he’s in a book. I hope he ends up miserable and wretched as a beggar rolling in the blood left on the streets of Paris after the Terror. Let him preach his visions there! I could have cheered when Colonel Grim asked who was going to clean out the latrines in the new utopia. For you see, in all these declarations of freedom, the bathroom really is key. I don’t object to your principles, though I may think them ridiculous. What I really object to is your utter neglect of details, the small things that end up making your life a living hell if they go wrong.

For real comfort, you need order and discipline. And all it requires is an occasional temporary delay in self-gratification. Culvert is a blithering idiot, and I hope his Babbletower collapses on him soon.

(Yes, I do realize that my reaction is the entire point of the book, and possibly of the book-within-a-book as well. I’m not supposed to like Culvert. Still, this is supposed to be tempered by a begrudging half-admiration for the man who is constantly described as “intelligent” and “brilliant”. But there is no such ambiguity on my part. I am a fanatic. I despise Culvert and all other fools like him, and I most decidedly disagree with the assessment that he is “brilliant”. He is simply inventing a whole social theory to justify the fact that he’s obsessed with sex, something which is neither original nor impressive. Self-righteous moron.)

[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.

[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.

Which is to say, it has a very healthy collection of the latest fantasy books, including The Paladin of Souls, which was just published this year. The drawback, and of course there is a drawback, is that Widener’s entire circulating collection is in neatly organized stacks, left abandoned in dimly lit corridors with motion sensitive lights. Hardly the ideal place for browsing—the classic Widener expedition begins with the knowledge of one’s destination, its route mapped out neatly in Hollis searches with little room for detours. The cataloguing system is insanely scrupulous: fiction and literature are organized by the author’s country and date of birth. British literature is on the first floor, American literature on the second (both in the East wing, so you don’t have to travel too far), the shelves organized first by century, then by name. If you think about it, the librarians must research the books they acquire pretty extensively. I’ve wondered what they would do with authors like Neil Gaiman who are British by birth but have immigrated to America. Or what about authors born at the turn of the century? Should investigate one day.

In any case, I’ve been rather lax in updating this blog, which means that the books in my log has accumulated to the point where I really can’t afford to spend paragraphs discussing them, as much as I might wish. So hopefully, I’ll be able to confine myself to a few sentences per book without going off on happy tangents. Wish me luck.

Little Black Book of Stories, by A.S. Byatt: In my moments of soul-searching honesty, I wonder if I only enjoy Byatt out of literary pretention. Frankly, I don’t think I actually comprehend her at any deep level (or even agree with her for that matter), and I tend to admire her inventiveness and clever structure and sheer erudition (admit it, the natural history of thrushes and snails in Babel Tower was impressive). But she does fall in the category of contemporary literary fiction writers that I do enjoy, so why bother second-guessing my motives? Anyway, the story I particularly remember from this anthology is the one about the writing class because I finished it on the uncomfortable thought that writing requires suffering. One, you only want to write about life when living it has become sufficiently miserable. Two, while the maxim says to write what you know, you can also only really write well if you are distanced from your subject—that is, living a tragic or even simply pathetic life will give you the proper perspective to write about ordinary life. Three, you can only write about something you desire, and if your life is dull and ordinary, you desire dull and ordinary things like action and adventure and semi-pornographic romance. Four, on a deeper level, to be a writer, you must feel the need to write. My final conclusion: this is why I have no vocation as a writer.

Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood: Initially, I was reluctant to read this novel, but after repeated exhortations from ma meilleure amie, I caved in, bought it and read it. I still don’t know if I regret it or not—I have to admit that I didn’t really enjoy the book, although it didn’t commit the sin of boring me at all. On the contrary, that book is absolutely disturbing, and I had nightmares as I fell asleep after finishing the last page. It was scary. One, because I want to be a scientist, and prior to this, I thought my ethical position was pretty clear. Whole human cloning = bad, stem cells = relative to situation, transgenic organisms = good. I mean, I work with transgenic plants, and I plan to do research that involves genetically modified organisms! The book hit too close for comfort. Plus, the rampant commercialism, the…the cold godlessness of Atwood’s dystopia. Given Atwood’s axioms, my only choice is to give up and despair. I have no faith in human nature by itself, and it took me a few panicked moments before I remembered that I had a different framework in which I could think and look for hope. In any case, worth reading if only to creep yourself out. Thank goodness Atwood’s science is pretty unrealistic (people really should stop thinking of genes as the all-magical unit; they work in networks, you know, horribly complicated ones that places like the CGR are devoted to untangling). Oh, and don’t forget the priceless malapropism: “proteonome”.

Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold: The sequel to The Curse of Chalion. Not quite as good as the first, but still, really wonderfully written. Reading Bujold is so refreshing—just clean, wonderful storytelling without any weaknesses to distract me.

An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro: I’ve just realized that all of Ishiguro’s narrators speak with the same voice: modest in a subtly false way, convinced at once of their relative insignificance yet also secretly believing in their ultimate importance, deeply misguided in their perceptions of themselves and the people around them. Not that it stopped me from enjoying this—I felt it was subtler than The Remains of the Day (I wondered which was written first?) for some inscrutable reason. Self-absorbed teenagers should read Ishiguro, for the sake of their own maturity. Neither your achievements or sins are as great as you think; you are both important enough to be hated unconditionally and insignificant enough to be forgiven. Oh, and beautifully sad and evocative, as usual; in a way closer to The Remains of the Day in nostalgia for a more dignified past, than to When We Were Orphans which is…just odd and bewildering in so many ways. (Narrator’s voice is still the same though.)

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams: I’m probably uttering heresy, but I prefer the two Dirk Gently books to the Hitchhiker series (well, the first three books were brilliant, but Mostly Harmless utterly confused me and sounded like it was written by a schizophrenic). Anyway, enjoyed it, although I’ve been vaguely wondering why an adamantly atheist Adams enjoys writing so much about coincidences and paradoxes. It’s quite possibly part of the deeper satiric commentary that I completely missed. Oh well, it was funny; we don’t always need to use our brains when reading for pleasure.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie R. King: Read on the recommendation of one of my Greenough floormates. I think I would have fallen in love with the book only if Mary Russell wasn’t such an unforgivably annoying character. (Not to mention Mary Sue. Ew.) She’s too perfect: smart, sassy, rich, pretty, strong, talented, independent, etc., etc., etc. Plus, she doesn’t even convince me that she’s smart—all that stupid deductive nonsense was much less impressive than Conan Doyle’s version, and throughout the book, she never really actually shows any brilliant logic. We have only the author’s word that she was being unusually observant (hah!). Finding the senator’s daughter was more an athletic than mental exercise, and as for that “leap of intuition” for Henry VIII? Bogus, pure bogus. I hated her emotionalism after she claimed to be so tough-minded…I mean honestly, her adventures didn’t seem to be particularly dangerous or traumatizing. What a self-absorbed little creep. Sherlock Holmes, as the Love Interest, was suitably fascinating and wonderful, however. And I have to admit, I would have enjoyed the book, if Mary Russell’s personality didn’t drive fingernails up the chalkboard. It has proper respect and knowledge of the Holmes canon, I’d say that much.

Wyrms, by Orson Scott Card: Wow, another book that creeped me out, but in a delicious way. Whatever happened to Orson Scott Card’s ingenuity and subtlety? Oh all right, the religious parallels and partly-disguised didactic lectures are hardly subtle, but the idea of organisms that hybridize with alien genomes in order to imitate and out-compete—pure biological bogus, but genius bogus, nonetheless. And it’s not entirely baseless—especially in the case of plants, where hybrids are common, and there’s also convergent evolution. I have to admit that while I disagree with a lot of OSC’s opinions, especially his politics and his whole anti-intellectualism crusade, I do agree with many of his more fundamental ones, and so the lectures in this book didn’t chafe me at all. And seriously, this is such brilliant, original thinking, exactly why I enjoy reading science fiction.

A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin: I’m starting to grow tired of this trilogy already. The second book isn’t as absorbing as the first, mostly because it drags on too long. I know people say they get bored of Lord of the Rings, but at least the plot developments move forward instead of repeating themselves in tiresome circles. Still, I’m interested enough to want to know what happens (have put the third book on reserve), unlike the Wheel of Time series (I still say that being unable to finish a story after eight 700+ page volumes is a sign of poor writing). Martin is also growing increasingly darker, more and more reminiscent of the author of Sandkings, an anthology of short stories that managed to scare me to the point where I actually just threw the book out to avoid having nightmares. (All right, so I’m overly sensitive! But it was a used book and bought for a $1, so it wasn’t heresy.) I really do like all the Starks, even Sansa in her own way, and I wish that the Others or the wildlings will hurry up and invade. I don’t have much fondness for anyone not from Winterfell though. Summer knights indeed, frivolous and doomed to rot. Who wants a king who throws tournaments on his way to war? Isn’t that sort of redundant? And ugh, Daenerys, who won my sympathy when Khal Drogo was alive but lost it as soon as he died. (So utterly naive. Incredible.) I think I have a bit of a soft spot for Varys, but that’s about it, on my list of characters I like.