2011 China Books

So after I accepted that I would give up on Flatterland, I did manage to start (and finish) Great expectations over the course of 2011. Wonderfully playful and interesting throughout, but long I guess. I was surprised how much I remembered of the Ethan Hawke film but looking back at a trailer it seems like the story is pretty different. Again, unrequited love is sometimes over-romanticised, but here it is at least is not held as something transcendentally pure - rather we just think Pip is a bit young and foolish. Glad to have finally read this - it's been on the shelf for a while.

Then back into the Murakami short stories The elephant vanishes. Some of these stories were extended to his longer stories, others seem like short exercises. I guess one that, although simplistic, really stands out for me was a little love story about passers-by. We could walk past the perfect person for us every day, but of course as we get older it becomes much less of a good idea to hassle people in the street and tell them this. Fortunately, people have RSVP which is sort of the same but doesn't involve as much of the uncertainty that hassling people on the street would.

Because I finished it earlier than expected while traveling in China, I also read The Scarlett Letter - entirely on my iPhone. It did seem like a bit of undesirable thing to read a book in this way, but it wasn't available in the library after I cam home either. I certainly would rather a book for recreational reading. The Scarlett Letter has become such an icon in our society - even Tool's the grudge has a reference to it, but I had no idea what the intention of the book had been. The story seems a perfect illustration of Sartrean bad faith - on the one hand you have an adultress who, by proudly wearing her confession, is able to accept herself and become quite a beautiful character, while on the other you have the community, forcing her to wear the confession and disfiguring their moral beings Dostoyevsky-like in the process. Despite the Christian overtones of the book, Christian morality doesn't really play much of a part here, since there are so many symbols and dreamscapes in the book the society and religion that governs it may as well be fictional.