Dead Souls

A deeply satiric and funny book by one of Russia's great authors. The premise is that a con man, Chichikov, is going around the contryside buying "dead souls" or dead serfs' names from small provicial landowners. The 'dead souls" are serfs who have died but have not yet been registered as dead thus taxes must still be paid on them the same as if they were still alive. A good deal of the novel is taken up describing the "wacky" negotiations that occur as Chichikov gathers his souls to him. His purpose is revealed about midway, that he intends to pass his "dead souls" off as living collateral and borrow a large amount of money. The book abounds with instances of how stupid, petty, and self-serving the landowners and government representatives behave. Apparently, this book inspired a fair amount of controversy at the time. Many people found the title offensive to religious teaching. Gogol had intended to write 3 parts to "Dead Souls" but only published the first part. A second part that he spent a number of years writing he destroyed just before he died supposedly on the advice of his spiritual adviser. The aim of the book is of course to expose the corruption at the heart of a slave society, but it's done in an almost lighthearted way so it doesn't bear down on the reader as heavily as other 19th century Russian writers. I was surprised at the mix of language in the book. Slang, cursing, and poetry all coexist together comfortably. There's some very beautiful language even as the author describes the most unbeautiful things. I definitely recommend this especially to someone who has not read very much Russian literature. Gogol has a different take on life!

A Tale of Two Cities

This is my third book for the Classics Challenge. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens has one of the most famous first lines,"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, "... and on for a whole paragraph! Anyway , the two cities are of course London and Paris and the story centers around the French Revolution. One of the main protaganists is Charles Darnay, a French nobleman who has more or less renounced his aristocratic background and is on trial for his life in England for being a spy. Through that trial he meets a French physician in exile who was unfairly imprisoned in the Bastille. Darnay falls in love and marries the doctor's daughter and they have a child. We're also introduced to the Defarges who are a French couple who help get the doctor out of prison but also lead the beheading of enemies at the guillotine. Through some hidden plot twists, it is revealed that Madame Defarge has a blood vendetta with Darnay's family and that is one of the plots driving the novel. The book is a commentary both on the oppression of the French people by the aristocracy and the consequent excesses of hatred and violence toward them. The ending is a happy one finally for Charles Darnay but only because of the Christ like sacrifice of another character, Sydney Carton. I enjoyed the book, maybe not quite as much as I thought I would and I can't really say why that is so. That said, it's amazing Dickens can cover so much ground in under 400 pages. The book also ends with another famous line, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." I will end with those wonderful lines since Dickens said it best.

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

This book was specifically recommended by Michael Chabon, the author of The Yiddish Policemen's Union, as an inspiration for his writing. I'd never read anything by Chandler so I thought I'd give it a try. The writing is excellent and it is the original hardboiled detective novel but I find the world the characters live in ugly and inhospitable. Of course, that's the point and there is redemption at the end because Philip Marlowe, the P.I. , is not bought off. The book is mostly about corruption, moral, spiritual, and physical. Marlowe is the struggling P.I. who befriends a drunk, I'm not sure quite why but he senses some kind of likeness with this man. His involvement with Terry leads him into a series of investigations involving murder, organized crime, police corruption, and sexual impropriety. The characters all struggle with existential angst and it's difficult to stay afloat psychologically without feeling one is naive. Of course, it can just be read as a straight up detective story but it's just a little too edgy to ignore the social commentary. Chandler was writing in the postwar period and reflects the darker undercurrents of that time. So, it's and interesting read but Agatha Christie it's not!

Kya- The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, pub. 1844, 1245 pg. , is at heart an adventure story. The basic plot, based loosely on a true story, is of an innocent sailor on the brink of personal and professional happiness, being betrayed by 3 acquaintances. He is falsely accused of conspiring to bring Bonaparte back to power, condemned to prison , and sent to an awful island dungeon where he remains for 14 years. Most of that time he is in solitary and thinks he will go mad. One day he realizes that the inmate next door is digging a tunnel towards him in an attempt to escape. Eventually the two meet and it turns out the other inmate #27 knows where a fabulous treasure is hidden and when he eventually dies in prison, bequeathes the treasure to our hero #34 otherwise known as Edmond Dantes. Dantes does escape from the dungeon a bitter man bent on revenge. He feels God has given him this vast fortune for the purposes of enacting punishment on those men who wronged him and the people he loved. The rest of the book is taken up with an incredibly complex tale of exactly how he does extract his revenge or God's justice. It's quite an amazing feat that Dumas could conjure up this story and keep the reader's interest for over 1200 pages. Other bloggers advised reading the unabridged and I have to agree. I think the translation I read was quite good because so much emotion and nuance still came through the language. Definitely, a worthwhile read although it took me much longer than I had anticipated.

March by Geraldine Brooks

A friend of mine who's an expert in all things pertaining to books said Geraldine Brooks was her new favorite author so I had to read one her books. Initially, I felt lukewarm about using Little Women as a jumping off point but once I started reading the book I found it engaging. The story line is that Mr. March of Little Women fame is the lead character and the novel explores his civil war experiences and the changes those experiences wreak on his idealism. The March character is heavily based on Louisa May Alcott's own father Bronson Alcott. He was a contemporary and friend of Thoreau and Emerson. The author uses quotes from Bronson Alcott's own writings as well as Thoreau's and Emerson's writings. Brooks uses this history to further explore slavery, the Civil War, and the limitations of an individual's abilities and responsibilites in a period when historical forces are set loose. Actually, I found some of the themes explored similar to other great literature like War and Peace (which I read for the Classic Challenge last year). It's a fairly short book and not a difficult read. Brooks won the Pulitzer for this book and has also written at least two other historical fiction and a book of non-fiction about women in the Islamic world. I look forward to reading other works of hers and recommend this one.

Classic Challenge 2009

I'm happy to do this challenge again especially since I had a couple of leftovers from 2008.
My list is: Count of Monte Cristo
Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Far from the Madding Crowd
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Dead Souls

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

This is from a Nobel Prize winner (2006), a Turkish writer who is born the same year as myself and is a lifelong resident of Istanbul. It's a very interesting book although I found much of it sad but I guess much of it is meant to be sad. The basic story line is a Turkish poet who is living in exile in Frankfurt returns to his homeland to visit but one of his main objectives is to make contact with a woman who he has discovered recently divorced. He feels he may have a chance to win this woman now and so he journeys to a remote Turkish city to report on the state of affairs there but primarily to renew his acquaintance with this woman, Ipek, who he knew when they were all at university. The poet, Ka, is suppose to investigate the rash of suicides of young women who were in conflict with authorities over wearing their head scarves. They want to wear their head scarves as an emblem of their faith and the authorities, particularly the university, wants them to refrain from wearing them at school. The head scarves have become a symbol of faith versus secularism. This is a conflict that we're familiar with listening to the news from Europe. Ka has been living a rather desolate life in Frankfurt although he's relieved also to be able to leave Turkey whenever he desires. Ipek becomes the object by which he can achieve happiness if he can get her to return to Germany with him and share his life. Unfortunately, Ka and Ipek and everyone we meet in the city of Kars become embroiled in a bizarre political coup and the story goes on from there. There is a nice literary deceit in that the author also appears in the story as Ka's friend who is retracing his time in Kars after Ka's death in Frankfurt. Pamuk uses Kars as a cut off place, cut off by snow, in which to enact his story of love and politics. I don't claim to understand many of the cultural implications of the book but I did understand the terrible duality of Turkey, the bridge between east and west, and this seems to torment the society as the struggle to find their path. Will they be modern, like Europe , godless? or will they go the way of the Islamic republic or some variation of and think what they like regardless of facts? These are some of the important questions discussed in the book along with talking about everyday sorrows and joys, although joy seems to be a commodity in short supply in Kars. The review quotes make much of the literary angle of the book too, how a writer is creative and delves into the mind of his or her characters. I think all in all I liked the book and would try to read other books by this author. I recommend it as timely reading.