Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach: I’m not a forensics enthusiast so I hadn’t read Roach’s Stiff despite it being highly recommended to me by several people. However, my curiosity was piqued when I heard that Roach and her husband volunteered to be the first individuals recorded having sexual intercourse by MRI. One always admires a writer for going the full length to do her research—even if the publicity helps her too—and that impression was certainly not diminished as I read the book. Roach adopts a casual, first-person tone: this nonfiction book, while full of interesting trivia as well as valuable information about the physiology of sex, is really a narrative. It’s a story about her investigation into the challenges surrounding the scientific research into sex, as well as the characters of the researchers themselves; she draws compelling portraits of the people she meets. I admit that I’m not used to reading popular nonfiction, so perhaps Roach’s style has become the norm, but I found it very engaging. Similar in approach, although completely different in style from Victoria Finlay’s Color, which I enjoyed for its narrative form. Roach is of course much more chatty and prone to tangents—she uses footnotes enthusisatically—but she never fails to treat her subject seriously, despite her lighthearted tone. I wish I’d made a list of all the “fun facts” I learned while reading the book (am still strangely fascinated, for example, by the account of a woman who can reach orgasm without any physical stimulation but merely by breathing).

The Annotated Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (annot. Alfred Appel): I make a particular point of describing this book as The Annotated Lolita because reading an annotated text is different from reading the text in isolation. And I did make the choice (or was it a mistake?) to read the annotations as I read the story. I doubt that it would have been possible to do that if Nabokov weren’t so obviously a master of his craft; despite my constant mental interruptions, I never felt that I lost the flow of the story. On the other hand, my reading experience was spoiled because the annotations were meant for a reader who had already finished the book. I didn’t realize, for example, that it would have come as a surprise to most readers who Humbert Humbert actually killed; though in retrospect I can appreciate how Nabokov manipulated reader expectations throughout the story. Yet I didn’t directly experience that manipulation, and I wonder if the impact of the story was somehow lessened because of that. I also realized while reading the novel that many paragraphs in it sounded quite familiar—in high school, I had edited a classmate’s rough draft of a term paper on Lolita, and I’ve of course seen quotes and excerpts almost everywhere—and I had the decidedly odd feeling of déjà vu, as if rereading a book that I had not actually read before.

All that being said, the book was completely different than anything I expected. I suppose I was already prepared for the aesthetic pleasure of Nabokov’s prose style (though it’s clear that The Defense, the only other Nabokov novel I’ve read, was one of his earlier ones and didn’t show the same level of mastery that Lolita does). I was not so prepared though for the fact that it doesn’t read at all like a psychological novel; I’ve always assumed that it would somehow feel claustrophobic to read from Humbert Humbert’s “confessional” perspective, but in fact he keeps us at a distance with his wordplay and seemingly flippant tone. The lack of any titillating scenes also made me wonder why it’s so often condemned as a “dirty” book. True, its subject matter is probably as controversial as it gets, but the sexual content is minimal and almost never described explicitly. (I had an amusing conversation with my mother, where she tentatively asked me what Lolita was about—”Isn’t it about a stepfather…with his daughter?”—and why I was reading it. I had to laugh because she had recommended André Gide’s books to me—Gide, who celebrated homosexual pederasty—and I find the implicit sexual relations in The Counterfeiters much more likely to offend my mother’s morals than anything in Lolita.

In any case, I do suspect that reading the annotations made me a little emotionally detached from the novel; much of the pleasure was academic, in following the numerous allusions to Poe, the puns hidden in character names, the sheer control of language that Nabokov exhibits. I think the only moment that really gave me pause was when Humbert Humbert begs Lolita to return with him. Though I do think it isn’t meant to be an emotional novel; there’s too much self-mockery and hidden contempt for the reader in Humbert’s memoir that jerks you away from any attempts at pitying sympathy for the narrator.

What really impresses me over and over is the artifice—in all its nuances—of Nabokov’s writing. He makes no pretense at realism, even when he draws the most incisive portrait of motels in Midwest America. He presents his art as art, not as an imitation of life. Now there are writers who emphasize their writing to the point where they stop engaging the reader and merely indulge in the equivalent of artistic masturbation (I am harsh only because I recognize this failing in myself), but Nabokov makes his writing the centerpiece that communicates with the reader. It’s as if…he makes no attempt to hide the puppet strings, but instead of it being an ugly intrusion on the reader’s consciousness, those very strings are incorporated into the show. Rather like (to use a similarly theatrical example) having visible stagehands change sets during a play as part of the performance. It seems immensely difficult to me, and I am all the more blown away by how Nabokov does it faultlessly. I am watching a virtuoso perform.

Arabella, by Georgette Heyer: I never did get around to logging that Heyer reading spree in which I indulged last fall. I burned out after a while and decided to hold off on reading the last two Heyer novels I had obtained. I finally got around to reading them, and perhaps my dissatisfaction with Heyer’s male romantic interests (with the exception of Freddy from Cotillion, who may never be equaled) has mellowed because I didn’t dislike Mr. Beaumaris at all. I suppose it helped that although he was perilously close to being yet another rake (I dislike rakes immensely, and so many of Heyer’s versions happen to be misogynists at the same time), he managed to show some self-awareness. A cynic, but one with a sense of humor. Also, while his “prank” was irresponsible and could have seriously ruined Arabella’s life, he did his best to make up for it. I guess what also helped the dynamic was that Arabella remained self-possessed and calmly encouraged his meaningless flirtations for her own ends while mostly assuredly not falling in love with him. Actually, I think I mostly liked Arabella, especially with her social justice crusades.

Sylvester, by Georgette Heyer: Well, I didn’t like Sylvester at all, but he didn’t actively annoy me. It took me a while to start liking Phoebe; I still can’t understand how such an unconventional girl could be such a doormat to her stepmother. I mean, I do understand the fear of invoking displeasure or disapproval, but in my experience, those sorts of girls actively try to remain as conventional as possible. I mean, I’m not saying that those personality characteristics are mutually exclusive, but I do wish Heyer had put a little more effort into completing her characterization of Phoebe. She felt like two characters mashed into one. That being said, how delightful is it that Phoebe published a novel parodying the ton! That was what made me like her in the end.

[Daylight and Nightmare, by G.K. Chesterton]

From “The Angry Street”:

“And you?” he cried terribly. “What do you think the road thinks of you? Does the road think you are alive? Are you alive! Day after day, year after year, you have gone to Oldgate Station…”

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.)

[Tales of the Long Bow, by G.K. Chesterton]

I’ve been going off on a G.K. Chesterton reading rampage, and I have a funny quote, from “The Unobtrusive Traffic of Captain Pierce”:

“I have every reason to believe,” affirmed Pierce solemnly, “that Gurth the Swineherd made use of this identical building. I have no doubt it is in fact far older. The best authorities believe that the Prodigal Son stayed here for some time, and the pigs—those noble and much maligned animals—gave him such excellent advice that he returned to his family. And now, Mr. Oates, they say that all that magnificent heritage is to be swept away. But it shall not be. We shall not so easily submit to all the vandals and vulgar tyrants who would thus tear down our temples and our holy places. The pig-sty shall rise again in a magnificent resurrection—larger pig-stys, loftier pig-stys, shall yet cover the land; the towers and domes and spires of statelier and more ideal pig-stys, in the most striking architectural styles, shall again declare the victory of the holy hog over his unholy oppressors.”

Maurice, by E.M. Forster: Maurice draws a portrait of the eponymous protagonist, in the process of self-realization of his homosexuality while struggling with the taboos and social restrictions of his time. I’ve read Forster’s A Room With a View and Howards End a while ago, and somehow I felt the prose style in Maurice was rather different from what I remembered of Forster. (Or perhaps my memory’s just foggy?) Maurice is almost deceptively straightforward; the novel almost has the quality of a psychological case study, albeit with a more sympathetic touch.

In the beginning, Maurice is very much unaware of his desires, which express themselves confusedly in dreams and the usual cruelties among boys at public school. He only begins to “awaken” when he arrives at Cambridge and meets Clive, who is more self-aware but also conflicted about his sexuality in a way that Maurice, for all his obtuseness, is not. Clive tries to channel his attraction to Maurice into a sort of transcendent Platonic relationship, in what he interprets as the ancient Greek fashion, without allowing any physical consummation. Maurice easily follows Clive’s lead at first, but Clive abruptly decides after a trip to Greece that he no longer has any homosexual feelings and loves only women.

I found this part of the story to be the most bewildering and difficult to interpret. I was under the impression that most people who identify as gay or lesbian speak of their sexuality as something that they’re born with, something that they can’t just change or will away simply by wanting to. So is Clive simply going back into the closet? Or was his flirtation with “the Greek vice” merely an adolescent phase, the result of over-romanticizing classical times? How do you suddenly wake up one day and realize that your sexual identity has changed?

It’s interesting though how Clive and Maurice’s relationship starts in Cambridge and ends after they leave: the university as this highly artificial environment where Maurice comes to know himself but is unable to find fulfillment. It is only when he moves on from Cambridge and from Clive that he starts being an individual. At first he tries to ignore his desires, then tries to “cure” himself by consulting a doctor and even a hypnotist. But in the end, he does finally end up becoming sexually involved with Alec—Clive’s gameskeeper and a social inferior—and despite Maurice’s ambivalent reaction, one gets the sense that he has stopped trying to deny himself.

The ending felt a little abrupt—what happens to Maurice and Alec?—and there were quite a few unresolved issues left. Maurice and Alec are no ideal couple, and though their attraction seems much more tangible, they don’t seem to communicate any better than Maurice and Clive had. Forster wrote a terminal note, which made me wonder if the novel is unresolved because the larger social issue was unresolved at the time.

The Invention of Love, by Tom Stoppard: The play is set at the death of A.E. Housman, known for being a classical scholar as well as poet. As he crosses the Styx, ferried along by Charon, he sees moments from his life as a student at Oxford, where he met Moses Jackson, for whom he developed a lifelong unrequited love. Housman was also the contemporary of Oscar Wilde, whose shadow slips in and out of the play before making one appearance at the end to converse with Housman’s younger self.

I loved reading the play: Housman’s obvious passion for the classics delighted me, and I enjoyed the neurotic squabble of the academics who are his professors and colleagues. I really regret not being able to see an actual performance though, and I think I would have had a better appreciation for the play if I knew more about Housman himself (e.g. if I had read his famous cycle of poems, A Shropshire Lad). I got the sense that Stoppard quoted extensively, though I could only really note the quotes he attributed, and I think I would have a better understanding of the play’s structure and direction if I knew the references.

Stoppard’s language is delightful. There’s a particularly funny dialogue among Oxford academics, which incidentally makes for nice commentary on education and the purpose thereof:

Pattison: The modern university exists by consent of the world outside. We must send out men fitted for that world. What better example can we show them than classical antiquity? Nowhere was the ideal of morality, art and social order realized more harmoniously than in Greece in the age of the great philosophers.

Ruskin: Buggery apart.

Jowett: Buggery apart.

Pater: Actually, Italy in the late-fifteenth century…Nowhere was the ideal of art, morality and social order realized more harmoniously, morality and social order apart.

Ruskin: The Medieval Gothic! The Medieval Gothic cathedrals which were the great engines of art, morality and social order!

Pattison (at croquet): Check. Play the advantage.

Pater: I have been touched by the medieval but its moment has passed, and now I wouldn’t return the compliment with a barge-pole. As for arts-and-crafts, it is very well for the people; without it, Liberty’s would be at risk, in fact it would be closed, but the true Aesthetic spirit goes back to Florence, Venice, Rome—Japanese apart. One sees it plain in Michelangelo’s David—legs apart. The blue of my very necktie declares we are still living in that revolution whereby man regained possession of his nature and produced the Italian Tumescence.

There’s something particularly poignant about Housman’s love for Jackson. As in Maurice, Oxford becomes the place where Housman first discovers love but is unable to realize it; unlike Maurice, he returns to the academic world, keeping his passion suppressed by burying himself in classical scholarship. A lifetime spent loving one person without hope of ever being loved in return, and the way Housman preserves his love by remaining in the timeless cloister of academia appeal to my romantic sensibilities I suppose.

I finished The Man Who Was Thursday last night, and I reaffirm my goal to try to write like G.K. Chesterton. I really can’t describe the book adequately, but it was like one of those dreams where you’re terrified or wildly delirious but you don’t want to wake up because you want to know what happens next. Chesterton’s prose is vivid and dramatic, but just a little bit tongue-in-cheek so that you don’t know whether to hide under your blankets or to just laugh out loud. It’s surreal and yet believable at the same time—you’re sort of sucked in by the story until you find yourself a million miles from where you began. And I sound like the back cover of a cheap paperback.

[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.

Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding: I’ve seen Bridget Jones referenced obliquely so many times—in magazine articles, in the Very Secret Diaries, in passing conversations—that reading the actual book was somewhat of an anticlimax. I suppose it also didn’t help that I had watched the movie with Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth before I ever read the book. It was a light-hearted and enjoyable read but somehow unexciting. I suppose the problem is that I don’t think—or write—like Bridget at all, so the book’s appeal to me was more a matter of anthropological curiosity than any sense of identification.

The Club Dumas, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (trans. Sonia Soto): Sometimes a book is so perfectly fitted to one’s tastes that discovering it feels almost like an astrological convergence, an incredible coincidence and yet also an act of fate. Excuse my melodrama. I came across this book while combing the fiction shelves of the small bookstore at LAX, where I had been waiting several hours for my flight back to Boston. (I arrived at the airport at half past two in the afternoon, and the flight was scheduled for nine that evening.) I wonder if I would have ever come across the book otherwise and am thankful that I did. How could there be a book more custom-tailored to my guilty pleasures? The combination of Dumas and The Three Musketeers (a book that I had near memorized when I was ten), neurotic bibliophiles and book-forgers, an intriguing mystery with a cynical sleuth, occult rituals, a suspenseful plot, an unreliable and probably egomaniacal narrator…what more could I ask for? In fact, the neurotic bibliophilia alone would have been enough to appeal to me; in the end, this book for me was a book about the inseparable dangers and pleasures of reading. I am still not sure what exactly the girl was supposed to be—I suspect Pérez-Reverte may have been a little too ambitious in his storytelling since that plotline was resolved rather sloppily—but I adored the major plot twist in the book and the fanaticism of the characters. To love a book is to let it possess you.

The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal (trans. Richard Howard): There are two elements to The Charterhouse of Parma that make it such an enjoyable book. First, of course, is the romance. Not only romance in the sense of the forbidden love affair that is the crux of the story, but also the romance of youthful and impetuous idealism, a rosy-colored vision of the world where men are brave and gallant, love is always true, and heroes and heroines remain picturesque even in tragedy. Think Italy. Think Napoleon. The other element of course, which makes this novel something more than a romance, is Stendhal’s French skepticism and deft ironic commentary on the story. Against Fabrizio’s dreams of valiant battle, you have the absurd reality of getting lost in the middle of the battle and being taken for an enemy by the very soldiers he came to aid. Side by side with Fabrizio’s amorous adventures in Parma, you have Count Mosca and Duchess Sanseverina maneuvering for for political dominance at the Prince’s court, an exercise that revolves around the careful flattery of the monarch’s ego. Stendhal is not contemptuous but he does write condescendingly of the Italians, who are quick to emotion and far too caught up in their romanticism. (The French of course are too cynical and sophisticated to embarrass themselves in such a fashion.) His narrative voice is essential to this novel; ironically, it makes Fabrizio and Clelia’s love story seem more poignant and pure.

The Grand Tour, or The Purloined Coronation Regalia, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer: I think the letter format in Sorcery and Cecelia was more engaging than the diary entries and testimony in this sequel. But it was charming to see the four interacting. There is less prickliness and almost a sort of sweetness between Kate and Thomas…Cecelia however retains a matter-of-fact pragmatism. I read a review of the first book that criticized the two authors for giving their narrators such similar voices, and I have to acknowledge that the two are much more distinguishable in the sequel than they were before. Kate is more obviously insecure, while Cecelia is confident about everything. I must admit that I had no idea which author had written which character until I read this book.

The Devil in Music, by Kate Ross: Maybe it’s because I read this last book a month later than the first three, or perhaps it’s a function of the setting, but The Devil in Music seems to stand apart from the rest of the series. We are given more to the story and yet not enough, we hear more about Julian’s past than ever before, there are politics and music involved, and most of all, Julian is in Italy, not England. I’m glad I read The Charterhouse of Parma before this book because I had a better sense for the passions of the place. Julian falls in love more intensely than he does in previous novels (which may be why the emotion seems more convincing). The novel is more interesting for the music (and the Carbonaro conspiracies) than the mystery itself. All the new characters are vivid and fascinating, and I was particularly moved by the story of Valeriano, the castrato singer.

Conrad’s Fate, by Diana Wynne Jones: Chrestomanci is such an insufferable teenager, but he is still my favorite part of this book. I don’t know whether it was because I was reading the text on-screen rather than in print, but I found the pacing more uneven than usual. The usual untangling of the plot as all is revealed at the end felt more rushed than ever, and truth be told, I wasn’t all that interested by Conrad as a character. He was a bit nebulous, I thought. I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say the book was unsatisfying, but it felt like a permutation of previous storylines, which I found odd because DWJ likes to try out new things. The real highlight of the book was seeing Christopher before he actually became Chrestomanci and also getting a glimpse of his relationship with Millie. Prior to this book, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to attempt Chrestomanci fanfiction, but now I have a better handle on his character.