the Kafka Sentence

I had been recommended Disgrace from a number of sources, one of which said Coetzee was the best writer alive. He had told me about the court scene - which sounded very reminiscent of The Outsider, however on reading it I'm not sure whether that's deliberate... surely Coetzee would be familiar with Camus... anyway - : I struggle with books where I can not identify with any of the characters, this is probably one of those cases.

The protagonist, a somewhat washed up lecturer, wants to sleep with his students so endeavours to do so. Everyone's of age, so it's all legitimate, however what makes him dislikeable to everyone else is that he refuses to apologise in the hearing. It's a very Mersault type response, completely admitting the act, but suggesting that it makes no difference whether or not he feels bad about it, because he doesn't agree with their values. What makes the character dislikeable to me at this point, is that he claims to be "in love" with the girls, clearly identifying desire and love as one, which doesn't make him uncommon, I guess, but does make me think he lacks a recognition of the more complex and deeper feelings that constitute love. This is merely the novel's point of departure, the central theme of the novel is reconciliation in South Africa.

Lurie is ostracized and goes to live with his daughter for the sake of everyone and himself. It's not a completely cowardly gesture. His daughter is raped by a group of dark-skinned Africans, and the remainder of the novel looks at the relationship between father and daughter, and their individual responses to the traumatic experience.

To some degree, there is a focus on the difference between the two, Lurie being quite arrogant and righteous when it comes to his privileges, his daughter caring, sensitive and forgiving. What I found most noteworthy was what they shared: a Kafka-type sentence.

Both have been dealt a sentence, one that is to some degree just, and to some degree not. But each accepts this, and is willing to play the hand they have been dealt. Lurie does not agree that he did anything wrong, but he understands his responsibility to deal with it and not proclaim his innocence. His daughter, as she feels, has been punished for the faults of her people. She tries to deal with all the horrors of rape, the hatred and powerlessness, without complaining because she knows that in some ways she is suffering in retribution for the unjust crime committed against the African people during apartheid.

It is an admirable trait of each of them, although I did find myself struggling with the logic of the daughter. Sometimes it might be best to allow yourself to feel the victim, let yourself get angry and project your negativity onto someone else... but i don't know. I can relate to the sense of serving a sentence, just accept the limits now placed on your life and try to do your best in the circumstances. It's somewhat similar to the Kafka sentence - characters are placed in an irrational world, but try to deal with all the nonsense, rather than refuse to accept their predicament.

Absurdity in Kafka and Beckett

In Sartre's An Explication of The Stranger, he identifies the similarities in style between Camus and Kafka. It's not a comparison I've read a lot about, however there is certainly a similarity between the sentiment of Beckett and Camus, and in turn, a similarity in nonsense between Beckett and Kafka. Beckett's Endgame and Waiting for Godot are fairly similar. One is presented characters who seem determined to get-to-doing something, but never quite make a start. We are forced to follow, along with them, their absurd logic, and wonder why they bother doing anything at all when there seem to be no logical consequences for any of their actions. In Waiting for Godot especially, it seems obvious that they will be waiting forever, and yet we understand why they feel they must continue to wait. The similarity to Kafka in this respect is quite clear, although I think Kafka does a better job at detailing worlds, while Beckett presents us with a small fragment of a world which quite possibly has nothing beyond it.

The Castle is not finished, and not edited, so overall it is not very satisfying. The first scene, however is perfect. K. (his name changes, but let's call all of Kafka's characters K.) arrives at a village within the province of a castle, where he has been invited as a land prospector. After arriving, he is woken during the night and told that he cannot stay within the castle's realm without appropriate papers, and they seem quite unwilling to help him acquire these papers. I get the feeling that some of the side-episodes of Kafka stories relate to a specific life event, however I do love his style.

Similarly, I could read Beckett plays all day. There is something that seems to resonate true, that I find amusing and also feels justifies my own existence. The last line of Godot, "Let's get on with it" is a reference to the same line that closes Sartre's In Camera.

After Dark, after Japan

After Dark was the first Murakami book I read after visiting Japan. I had the quiet delight of being able to recognise the restaurant spoken of in the opening paragraphs and understanding very well the concept of the Love Hotel. This is one of Murakami's shorter books, and follows the events of Mari over the course of a single night.

The characters are all as we would expect from Murakami, and it is one of those semi-unconscious fantasy stories. One of the things I liked about it (which others mightn't) was its reasonably unresolved ending. Some things are never explained, so we can just focus on the images and feelings that come through. I think, as long as this is done well, leaving out details is a nice way to keep a novel tidy. It avoids sections that would be reminiscent of Plan Nine from Outerspace "Funny how the humans, who can think, are so afraid of those who cannot: they are the dead. Luckily our positron emitting guns enable us to control them, otherwise we too might be attacked" or something like that.

St. Exupery's Other Books

As I loved The Little Prince, I thought I might also like Saint Exupery's other works. Namely: Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre de Hommes), Night Flight, Southern Mail, Flight to Arras.

The first one of these I read, Wind, Sand and Stars seemed to be quite dense at first, requiring a lot of re-reading - however I think this was just my own mind being a little preoccupied. All of these books focus on flights, usually those to transport mail or to discover new flight routes. There is a beautiful image in my head that gets evoked each time, of flying at night, just being able to see the horizon, and seeing the stars above. It reminds me of driving home in the country, that serene and humbling experience of feeling alone in a vast open space.

I can't fly a plane, and I don't fly often, so there is nothing here that need only interest pilots. Saint Exupery has a lot of existential/absurdist ideas concerning the meaning of friendship, love, freedom and these notions all come through in these works. He was someone in love with the sky, not making a particularly good or faithful husband, which a lot has been written about (including The Tale of the Rose, by his wife). So what we hear more about is his adoration of friends and comradeship.

One particularly nice story, in Wind, Sand and Stars involves a crashed pilot, walking across snow covered mountains in search of rescue. After each kilometre he has to stop, open up his shoes to deal with the swelling, and continue on as his feet gradually become more and more useless. What keeps him going is the thought that if he is missing, his wife will not get the insurance payout until they find his body. After finally making it home, the first thing he says (admired so much by Exupery) is "I swear that what I went through, no animal would have gone through."

Exupery is loves the triumph of the human spirit, and of the modernist consolations of existence which come from freedom, friendship and love. One reads these books and can't help but admire the pioneer in him. He is still very popular in France - there is a nice big picture of him in a hotel in Toulouse, which the owners only thought it semi-odd that I would wander in only to look at it. (I mention this to show how much I am fond of Saint Exupery, not to offhandedly mention that I was once on a trip).

Americans hate happy endings!?

I saw A Clockwork Orange at some point when it seemed necessary to watch Kubrick films. Although it was old, I was still fairly uncomfortable with the in-your-face violence. The book, on the other hand, was written with a conscious attempt to avoid anything like this. The invented slang of the book (based on Russian) is so well done that it really does seem like a "glossary" would be a bit vulgar. As well as giving the book a timelessness to it however, the slang also functions to give distance to the violence described throughout. One settles in quite nicely.

I found it interesting to read that the Beethoven reference was meant to present an antithesis to the idea (popular at the time) that in interest in decent culture was incongruous with violent acts. Most interesting however, was the last chapter of the book - absent from the film. Apparently the US version of the book was released without this last chapter, because it gives the book a "happy ending". Burgess saw it as bittersweet, rather than just a convenient conversion on the part of the protagonist, however the philosophy he wished to propagate, indeed, depended on these final few pages. I think the book works well with this final chapter, leaving the reader less confused about what one should take from it - however I think the aesthetic of the film requires it to be left out. Hmm... interesting interesting

Virginity at Hanging Rock

I read Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay as part of my general goal to read more women writers (having very few encounters, one of which was Winterson... who I disliked, probably a little too much). Joan Lindsay was related to the great print-maker Norman Lindsay from central Victoria, who despite doing some fine nudes and lovely prints, also drew a great many cartoons to promote the White Australia policy and a few other undesirable trends of the time. So, written and set at this time, it has the realist style - lots of description. Lindsay also mentions many of the fashions of the day, without irony, such as the tendency for women to be pretty useless. Reflecting only on the narrative, I'm not quite sure one is meant to get out of this book.

However ... : before reading the book, I had seen the film and discussed it with my father (who at some stage managed to be an English teacher... despite failing in Year 12 because he didn't like the teacher). Whereas I had seen the movie, thinking about whether it was a true story and getting caught up in the mystery, he drew my attention to a few of its subtler themes: specifically, that of sexuality.

The story, is of course set during a fairly conservative period in Australia's history. Girls were meant to be proper, deferring sex to their eventual marriages. So what seems like a fairly trivial outing to the Hanging Rock, is made more significant by the fact that these young girls will be leaving (temporarily) the confines of the school, interact with the male driver, and potentially even more males. So an important concern of the head mistress, once the strange event occurs, is whether these girls will come back "in tact". Abduction, rape and murder are scarcely considered as possibilities, and the town, to some extent seems to accept that the girls strangely disappeared, and isn't it a shame because a couple of them were quite pretty and now they won't become wives and if they come back their reputations won't be so hot anyway.

Tied to the importance of sex (and lack thereof) is the properness of the head mistress and her absurd lack of compassion for the girls in her school, focusing as she does on the potential reduction in numbers that might result from the rumours concerning the picnic at Hanging Rock - she drives a young girl, who likes drawing to suicide, because the girl doesn't fit her conception of a young, proper and pretty girl.

Also of note is perhaps the banality of the male hero, deciding that since the girl that missing was so pretty he must set out to find her - himself being terribly disappointed when a different, slightly less pretty girl does happen to turn up!

So although I remember the book as being reasonably dry, there is certainly plenty to take in, and it will always perhaps be an important book in Australia's - particularly Victoria's - history. I have never been quite able to articulate it properly, but the book reminds me a lot of The Virgin Suicides. These undercurrents of young, female sexuality seem to be present in both - with an eventual notion that no-one really does quite understand what it means to be a young girl (paraphrasing from the film). Both stories seem to focus on young girls and that imposed notion of "womanhood". The girls are not so caught up in challenging this notion, but rather seem to quietly continue outside it, shaking their heads in pity at the idiots who think they have any idea.