Forgiving Anna and Emma (Tolstoi and Flaubert)

Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary each tell the respective (unhappy) story of women in marriage. The writing of such stories is indicative of the deeper development of female characters, and indeed, the acknowledgement that women are also capable of independent thought (as well as the obligatory service of their husband). The act of adultery means different things in different societies, so both these stories are often reinterpreted to fit in with popular trends - e.g. Madame Bovary is sometimes seen as a feminist triumph, the realisation of the female sexual desire that exists beyond the satisfaction of men.

Despite the loaded issues that form the focus of each story, it should probably be kept in mind that neither author is out to make a point. Anna Karenina, written during the realist era, seeks as much to give the reader an insight into late 19th century Russia, its society and decor, as it does to make its many observations concerning happiness and how we ought to live. Flaubert, known for abhoring high-society and its excess, makes no indigtment against Emma Bovary, as either a product of this society or as an adulterous wife. We are rather presented the lives of two women and those around them, complicated with many happinesses and unhappinesses along the way.

In reading Anna Karenina, I guess I began by making this mistake, and focusing on how Tolstoi was supposed to justify the actions of Anna. A woman, with a boring and unappreciative husband is seduced by a pretentious git. She doesn't deserve sympathy - she's an idiot. Of course, what becomes apparent is that happiness is so complicated. We are brought up expecting that things should fall into place, but nothing does and we are given insufficient resources to cope with the fall-out. The tragedy in Anna's case, is that she has an unrealistic faith in men to protect her from the society they drag her into.

Madame Bovary is a much more complex story, affected as it is by unmistakable mental illness. Similarly to Anna, Emma is married off with expectations that children, happiness and balls will ensue. This may not be an accepted reading, however what seems to happen is that the disillusionment with her marriage triggers a depressive episode, which later develops into what could possibly be Bipolar disorder. Madame Bovary becomes fixated on a friend of her husband, risking so much to see him and neglecting her baby and husband. At times, the love of M. Bovary is again recognized, however she is becoming more and more unstable as an individual.

The difficult thing to deal with in this story, is the confusion and difficulty faced by Emma's husband. He adores her, but is oblivious to the thought that she could act any other way than how she intends. Responsibility, agency and thought behind one's actions characterises any framework of ethics that exists today (and indeed has for a long time), so the thought that anyone around us could be acting against their desires and outside responsibility is not one we accept - not that we should accept it, but this means that such cases of mental illness become that much harder to deal with from the outside - because we can't reconcile someone's actions with who they seem to be.

A particularly powerful observation made here is that M. Bovary is so tentative around his wife, he wants to hold her and comfort her and make her happy, but he is afraid of how she will respond. This captures well that mixture of fear and longing that one faces when seeing someone experience this sort of difficulty (whether it's mental illness, drug addiction etc).

In a way, it felt like Madame Bovary contained everything important that was in Anna Karenina (and only a third the size), however that may be because Anna Karenina has many religious excursions as Tolstoi attempts to reassert the importance of God in 19th century europe. It certainly didn't excite me to go out and read War and Peace as quickly as possible.

Both books deserve to be read.

The strange case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde and a picture of Dorian Gray

Reading these stories, one after the other, I was surprised at the similar themes. Both stories explore the dark nature lurking in man that is only overridden by the ego during a process of individualisation. For both protagonists, that dark nature is alluring and disgusting simultaneously.

Despite the far-fetched nature of the stories, set around the 1900s, the stories have a lot in them in terms of self-exploration. After reading Jekyl and Hyde, i'd been told that it was one of the first novels to have homosexual overtones (which I didn't really pick up on), but this was perhaps mentioned to me because of its similarity to the Wilde book rather than anything else. It is a pity, in a way that Jekyl and Hyde has been retold so many times that many are unlikely to return to Stevenson's original (short) story, with so much depth to it. The writing style is one that makes me feel more intelligent just having read it, reminding me that there is a limit to what one can get out of simple writing styles like that of Murakami.

Some of the description in these two books is done so well that one is left quite disturbed, especially with the respective central scenes of bludgeoning violence. I found myself more uncomfortable in the presence of Dorian Gray than of Hyde, the latter being more straight forward and less insidious, but this is deliberate on the part of Wilde.

The version I had of Dorian Gray also had a review at the end that severely criticised the book - quite an emotive attack. It was interesting to read. Essentially it thinks the idea is executed dully - I disagree, that that is the extent of my enlightened review.

Gatsby, Meaulnes and Nagasawa

I read The Great Gatsby - that classic American Novel - well after reading Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) and shortly after Le Grand Meaulnes (Alain-Fournier). The former had reidentified it as one of those books I should read, while the latter's title (obviously) reminded me to get to it. The similarity between the titles apparently might not have been accidental, with Fitzgerald having recently read Le Grand Meaulnes but I'm not sure of the facts here - the stories are different enough, however they do share the first person removed third person perspective - i.e. the title character's story is told from the perspective of a friend.

I think it's this narrative device that might be why Gatsby is so important as a text - beyond its essential Americanness. What this enables is a projected authenticity concerning the plight of the subject (e.g. think of the difference in impression one gets from "i am good" and "he is good"). Gatsby and Meaulnes are similar characters, sharing a similar friendship with the respective narrators. Both are talented, driven, and caught up in a romance that has strayed from the more genuine feelings of love to those of obsession and objectification. The narrator's friendship is undervalued (which is accepted gracefully in both cases) and it just seems to become more and more clear that these admired men, have somehow missed the point (sort of a Kurtz-esque fall).

In Norwegian Wood, Watanabe befriends Nagasawa, and what they share is a love of Gatsby. Nagasawa is of course, a reincarnation of the Gatsby character, and so reading Fitzgerald's novel fleshes out their friendship and allows us to better understand his function in the novel. This is my favourite thing about intertextuality, so much is inferred just from a deliberately placed reference... I think it's why I want to read so many of the "classic" texts - so that my reading of everything else can be enhanced.

I loved Gatsby, but mainly for a passage at the end, which I think justifies everything that precedes it (I didn't find the style to really flow so well... lots of re-reading to work out what's going on - but that's probably my fault - who am I to say it's not perfect?). The passage is this:

"It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..."

Sometimes books will use 150 pages of description and skeleton story, just to allow a reflexion like this to make an impression on the reader, so powerful and beautiful, that might not otherwise have been made.

something mean about Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera is nothing short of amazing - in this book anyway - i've read other stories, such as Identity, where this amazingness is perhaps questionable. The most attractive thing about Unbearable Lightness of Being is the exploration of Nietzschean writing and philosophy. The author takes time out to discuss Nietzsche (sometimes from characters' perspectives, sometimes the narrator's) which feels like something one shouldn't be able to do but which is great. It carries the danger of making the story inaccessible, or too diffracted (think Sartre's Nausea) but I am confident that he does it well. As well as the Nietzschean excursions, Kundera also likes literary excursions, discussing the plot of Anna Karenina and the meaning of coincidence in literature and hence life. Particularly emotive, is the image of Tereza, the unappreciated wife, carrying Anna Karenina under her arm, almost like a security blanket as she embarks on an out of character affair. She is afraid, and clings to the book, thinking that since this guy has it on his shelf, it must be okay. It really is quite sad... which brings me to what I think I don't like about Kundera, although I can't say I'm sure.

It feels like this book is trying to challenge the reader's sense of goodwill. Like - there's nothing philosophically wrong about infidelity, if people are badly affected by it that's their own problem. The book is trying to promote this "lightness" where we don't have to carry the burdens of action, the heaviness of others' emotions and our own regrets - and I just don't buy it. It feels all too much like an excuse for being an apathetic person. Similar criticisms exist about The Outsider, I guess, however although society's values are challenged there, the human experiences is not. In discussing this with my friends, I think I usually lose the argument - and that what Kundera purports may indeed be the truth of the matter. Some sympathy is shown for Tereza, having to deal with her husband's hair constantly smelling like vaginal juices (this is the part of the book the friend who gave it to me kept asking if I was up to), however the sympathy seems contrived and inauthentic. I was probably reading this at a bad time as well, when these issues would have been particularly annoying to deal with.

To the discussion of coincidence, which I did love: the story of Anna Karenina is summarised through its beginning and end, namely the recurring theme of the train. Kundera here, gets in touch with our sense of sentiment and our desire to see things symbolically. We can attribute importance to coincidences, symbols etc., not from any suggestion of a higher being (God wanted me to see this... etc.), but rather, since it's there, it plays a role in our psyche. I might meet a girl who I fall in love with on the train, and she may not have talked to me if I'd not been reading Kafka - so I project meaning onto Kafka, onto books, and the love is in turn tied to a sense that Kafka is special. There's no transcendental meaning it, but some secret promise is shared between hearts - something like that.

So yes, Kundera, good, but I'm not sure I like him. There's definitely something post-modern about him, and perhaps I prefer something where meaning is still important.

descendents of Darwin

Having only a basic understanding of Darwinism and a vague understanding of Genetics and related science in general, I read books like The Origins of Virtue and Birth of the Mind more from a philosophical perspective on mind and identity. I wish to take the former to task for many things, whilst the latter constitutes the closest thing to my understanding of God and the Universe.

The Origins of Virtue is none-the-less interesting, presenting examples from game theory (the famous prisoner's dilemma "tournaments"), historical anecdotes concerning altruism etc. A particularly undesirable chapter concerns Australia's aboriginal people, stating firstly that they had nothing resembling "law" when settlers arrived. This view, inherently racist, was well discredited with the Mabo case (years before the book was published). The central tenet of the book is the old "we are only altruistic through selfishness" argument, utilising the desire for genes to propagate themselves as its main advocate. I think, philosophically, this is a redundant argument. Socialogically, I think it is a stupid argument. Any talk of virtue has to relegate itself to our own preconceived ideas of what it means to say something is selfless and how this impacts our outlook on the world. Once this talk is buried in "selfish genes", we are reverting to radical determinism, where talk of virtue means nothing. Once we take this line, ideas of individuality and agency become meaningless, which in turn makes any talk of ethics meaningless. The fact is, we choose to do things for a variety of reasons, and an overriding "good-intention" is still something that should be valid as a philosophy. As an upshot of this: I wonder why books like this bother publishing themselves.

The Birth of the Mind, on the other hand, I found clearly expressed and very fascinating. The book traces the development of the mind to the (chance) mutation of dna and this makes so much sense as to make obselete any discussion of an eternal soul, a creator, or anything such. I take the absurdist stance that we can can still have meaning in our lives in this framework - because our minds have developed to a point where we want to make sense of the world, giving that yearning its own importance.

So, both these titles obviously stem from the Darwin work, each looking into different aspects of existence based on this relatively new way of looking at the human condition.

Simon James - Stumbling toward the singularity

This was submitted (unsuccessfully) to a journal and was written as a sequal to an Andrew David Stapleton short story.

Stumbling toward the singularity, my feet crash against the sleepers and rubble but my momentum keeps me upright. Even after I have passed 17 sleepers the view stretched out before me is the same: the shape of the tracks, the number of discernible planks, the reflection of the early morning sun on the steel. Altering my point of reference changes nothing. 

I wonder whether a train will come.
            I try to remember whether I have ever seen a train along these tracks. 
            The tracks’ convergence would force the train to derail.  I consider this and then try to stop.  Gravity or some other kind of acceleration finally gets the better of me and buries my knees in the blue rubble.  I rise quickly and dust myself off, glancing around, pre-emptively embarrassed, and ensuring that no-one has seen me pelt randomly down the train-tracks and dive just as suddenly into the space in-between.   

Only the cat.   

Motionless, I cast my eyes toward the horizon and imagine the train.  It does not derail.  It gets smaller.  At every point its wheels are as wide as the planks of wood that stitch these tracks together, and those stitches become infinitely smaller as they get closer to that point. 

I am smaller.

Turning around, I realize that the cat too is has become less of a cat – more so because of the distance between us.  

Carefully, (because I don’t want any part of my body to become smaller by itself) I bend down and grasp a handful of stones.  Once again turning my back on the town I hurl them toward the end of the tracks.  I watch closely as they rise, fall, and become tiny as they get further away.  

If I continue to convince myself that the tracks meet, how much will change?  The cat may have brought others, and I’m sure that it is at this point that they headed back, deciding, once and for all, that there was nothing so important she could show them that was worth jeopardizing a job, a lover or the start of a French play.  

I press on, perhaps less enthusiastically than before, knowing that by the time I reach the point of infinity both the cat and I will have diminished to almost nothing.  

So good i read it twice

Having seen the BBC series and the movie, it was difficult to realise that I was reading Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe unnecessarily, since I'd read it. It wasn't until some kind of "Gosh, by jove" statement from one of the kids that I realised I'd come across this before.

Since so many comparisons are drawn between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, I found it hard to be too sympathetic towards this book. It's nowhere near the poetic masterpiece written by Tolkien - although I suppose it's not intended to be... but I always remember something about Tolkien being ridiculed by his writing/reading friends for his ideas as he was writing.

This book is very English... very proper English, so it's easy to get annoyed at the characters. Some of the morals also seem a little dated, and it's hard to accept that the gender roles allocated to the children are only a fault of the time and not of the author - afterall, many of the females in LOTR are happy to get their hands dirty.

Having said this, perhaps the most resonating passage in this book is the folklore concerning the stone table - although it is a bit awkwardly phrased. But I like the parallels with the Christ story, and that since Aslan is goodness, he's not something you can get rid of - still a bit trixsy and deceitful one might say though.

Alain de Botton's own philosophy: Status Anxiety

A had heard of The Consolations of Philosophy from a few friends, but it seemed too introductory to be of interest. My Dad (A man quite interested in introductions and dot points) showed me the six-part TV series Philosophy: A guide to Happiness, which I did watch and found fairly interesting. Alain de Botton's take on philosophy is nice and accessible, allowing some of these thinkers to be introduced to those who may not usually take any interest in philosophy.

Where episodes concerned thinkers I knew more about (e.g. Nietzsche) however, I couldn't help but feel that aspects of their philosophy was being misinterpreted (or at least misrepresented). I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know more about these thinkers than de Botton, however it seems that in simplifying an idea (whose beauty may lie in its innate complexity), something may be lost - particularly the ideas of someone like Nietzsche - wasn't it a misrepresentation of his ideas that was used to promote fascism?. So whilst entertaining, the shows are about as interesting philosophically as a certain book-come-movie (about anagrams) is interesting mathematically.

However! Although, for an introduction to philosophy I would recommend Solomon, I was interested to see how rigorous Alain de Botton's own philosophy was - hence my purchase and subsequent reading of Status Anxiety. I had really hoped a lot from this book, as I believe the concept of status anxiety is important to the philosophical ideas concerning the individual and identity. For example, to create a sense of self, we associate many ideas with who we are and reject many others, which may or may not be true of ourselves. We associate ourselves with certain dreams, however these dreams are sometimes more associated with societal expectations or associations between happiness and the success of others: i.e. status anxiety - this is what I was hoping for anyway.

Unfortunately, the exploration is somewhat banal, lacking depth and originality. This is not to say I did not somewhat enjoy it - I just don't consider it to be a philosophical work, which is perhaps not the intention. Perhaps de Botton's main concern is with pop-society and issues like consumerism, in which case this book might be better considered alongside Affluenza, than The Gay Science. Some history to modern thoughts is given, and then philosphical anecdotes are used to guide the reading.

My main concern with Status Anxiety is this: Status anxiety is equated with the pursuit of material wealth. Especially today, status can be understood in many more forms. I think of myself, and how much of my dedication to obtaining a PhD is tied to my desire to be seen as intelligent. Think of people who believe "to travel" means "to be somebody" (interestingly, travel is presented as something which might assuage status anxiety). Consider people with little interesting in writing who feel they "must write a book", men who'd rather be seen with a pretty wife than one that makes them happy and that they are faithful to. This is perhaps a more important failure of the book than what is focused on by the philosophically inclined.

Status anxiety, in my opinion, is that complex of external influence and internal projection which leaves us wanting. It is where we orient ourselves towards achievements and experiences for reasons other than what they provide in of themselves. Status anxiety can be considered alongside that existential yearning to be someone of significance as we are faced with an indifferent and infinite universe.

wonderful wizard

Unlike most people my age... or younger, I don't think I've seen The Wizard of Oz (the movie) the whole way through. It was interesting, then, to read the book and understand the story. Baum apparently avoided writing the Wicked Witch as a haunting character - aiming the story at children, and believing he knew how a children's story should be.

As an important story culturally, I guess I focused on the elements of the story and symbolism that have subsequently pervaded other literature. Each of the characters is on a quest to see the wizard, to gain something about themselves they see as lacking. The Lion's desire for courage and the Tinman's yearning for a heart, I think are done particularly well - the sentiment that courage is to act despite fear, and that to love is to see the world beautifully and to care, come across nicely. Perhaps the only real reservation I have is that the Scarecrow gets a degree as a substitute for a brain... perhaps this idea was less loaded back in the day. By the way, there's an interesting story about the movie: on receiving his degree, Scarecrow decrees "The square of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side" - which is false in all cases. Obviously based on pythag. thrm which concerns right-angle triangles, and the square of the hypotenuse, not the square root... but there's some dispute as to whether this was deliberate, accidental, or just stupid.

The main thing I noticed here was the lack of description - particularly of action sequences. The group are surrounded by hounds, all of a sudden, the Tinman cuts their heads off, the end. Done deliberately to avoid frightening the young children. I remember writing a very similar descriptive passage in my story "The Three Missile Men", which I wrote at the age of 6.

The Wizard of Oz is not a story like The Hobbit, The Little Prince, or even Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, all of which are well crafted, interesting stories in themselves but also hold deeper meanings for adults. Perhaps of this lot, The Little Prince stands above the rest - but I am biased towards that particular book.