The Orphan Master Son's by Adam Johnson
March 2015
"In Mexico, there are these fish that have colonized the freshwater caves along Sierra del Abra. They were lost. They found themselves living in complete darkness. But they didn’t die. Instead, they thrived. They adapted. They lost their pigmentation, their sight, eventually even their eyes. With survival, they became hideous. I’ve rarely thought about what I once was. But I wonder if a ray of light were to make it into the cave, would I be able to see it? Or feel it? Would I gravitate to its warmth? And if I did, would I become less hideous?" ~Reddington, The Blacklist |
When I was fourteen years old, my father bought me a shabby copy of a paperback from a book sale written by an author named Harlan Coben. It's entitled Just One Look and it was about a housewife who discovers a weird photograph among her family pictures just after she had the film developed. She showed it to her husband who started acting strange until he just disappeared one night. What reeled me in wasn't really the mystery of this plot but the role and participation of its main antagonist, a twenty-six-year old contract killer named Eric Wu who grew up in North Korea and was trained as a master torturer of sorts, using a martial art that targets pressure points across the human body. He utilizes this technique to inflict pain all throughout the novel, and his chapters are just electrifying to see unfold. Wu was calculating, terrifyingly apathetic and often amusing in his contemplations. You get the sense that because of his upbringing and brutal encounters as a child who grew up in such an oppressive state, he has a unique way of examining things. He stands separate from the rest of the world, looking from the outside with a ready shrug of the shoulders while the rest of us form meaningful relationships, and fulfil our dreams and goals. For a man like Eric Wu, life is simply about survival; hurt or be hurt, kill or be killed.
It wasn't until I read him in his very first appearance in yet another Coben novel Tell No One that my fascination for this character grew and evolved into something that can only be described as a consuming obsession that lasted for a decade since high school. My connection with this fictional character also fostered my interest in North Korea as a country. In trying to understand the extensive damage of Eric Wu, I also started to take an active stance in comprehending said communist state. Researching North Korea was simply my secret hobby that only a few of my friends can understand. I was insatiably curious of the life and culture of that country, and so this is initially what made me buy this book the moment I laid eyes on it one day about eight months ago. I didn't know anything about it. I simply took it out of the shelf and read the back of the book. Just the fact that it's about North Korea was enough incentive but I put off reading this because my Batman comics diet got in the way. Now here I am at last. I just spent two weeks reading this novel and I felt numb all over right after finishing it. It had been very personal for me; the culmination of ten years worth of slightly abnormal fixation that brought me to the heart of this story.
I find that some books can just physically hurt you, and there is no way of knowing which ones will leave the most scars. I am sure even a hundred pages in last week that this book will leave me a gaping wound that will take a while to heal.
It wasn't until I read him in his very first appearance in yet another Coben novel Tell No One that my fascination for this character grew and evolved into something that can only be described as a consuming obsession that lasted for a decade since high school. My connection with this fictional character also fostered my interest in North Korea as a country. In trying to understand the extensive damage of Eric Wu, I also started to take an active stance in comprehending said communist state. Researching North Korea was simply my secret hobby that only a few of my friends can understand. I was insatiably curious of the life and culture of that country, and so this is initially what made me buy this book the moment I laid eyes on it one day about eight months ago. I didn't know anything about it. I simply took it out of the shelf and read the back of the book. Just the fact that it's about North Korea was enough incentive but I put off reading this because my Batman comics diet got in the way. Now here I am at last. I just spent two weeks reading this novel and I felt numb all over right after finishing it. It had been very personal for me; the culmination of ten years worth of slightly abnormal fixation that brought me to the heart of this story.
I find that some books can just physically hurt you, and there is no way of knowing which ones will leave the most scars. I am sure even a hundred pages in last week that this book will leave me a gaping wound that will take a while to heal.
"People do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they have done."
I recently just acquired a taste for dystopian stories which was why most of the science fiction books I've read since Brave New World four years ago focus on that, and it's funny that something a lot of us seek and partake so eagerly in fiction can and actually do exist in the real world. North Korea is the nightmarish dystopia come to life, based from several accounts of citizens who have defected, and the experiences of tourists who were brave enough to navigate it. Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son is something I can consider a fine work of imaginative fiction because it aimed to capture and define the essence of what it must be like to live in a communist state that denies its constituents a sense of identity and individuality; where propaganda is as rampant as it is a basic component of the daily lives of its people.
To live in North Korea must be like breathing in a place where a man who fancies himself a god among men rules a starving nation and can determine their fates based on whatever whim pleases him; the people are just dead leaves, crushed by the tyrant’s weight, and then swept away.
The Orphan Master's Son is a four-hundred-plus narrative that is divided into two parts. First, we have the protagonist Pak Jun Do and his biography, while the other is the confessions of Commander Ga, the supposedly rival political figure of the then-current Great Leader himself, Kim Jong-Il. The first part is akin to a coming-of-age story for Jun Do who was the son of the caretaker of the orphanage Long Tomorrows. Jun Do named the orphans after martyrs from the Japanese-Korean strife, and he himself picked the name "Pak Jun Do" because of its personal significance to him (which is somewhat of a foreshadowing too). Jun Do believed that his father is unable to show his love because of the loss of his mother whom he insisted was a singer spirited away to Pyongyang because of her beauty and talent. This fantasy served as an ember of hope for him growing up, and he continued to cling to it quite fiercely even as an adult man. Its poignancy affected me greatly, most probably because Coben's Eric Wu also lost his mother (in the most horrendous way possible; she was tortured, executed then hanged in front of him--he was six years old). It's also a notable pattern for Jun Do to seek women as if each one is just another reflection of a mother he never had. This will consistently play out for the rest of the novel.
By the second part, a new character becomes the second narrator who relays certain key events in his perspective. He remained unnamed throughout the book and all that we really knew about him was that he was a dedicated worker; an interrogator who wishes to write biographies about the people who were captured and detained once they were considered as traitors or dissidents to the Kim regime. He strongly believed that what matters in the end when all is said and done would be the stories of individuals who will disappear and be long forgotten. In North Korea, people are expenditures whose relevance is always temporary, if not non-existent. This unnamed narrator acknowledges that which was why he develops an attachment to Commander Ga whose biography he desperately wants to write.
To live in North Korea must be like breathing in a place where a man who fancies himself a god among men rules a starving nation and can determine their fates based on whatever whim pleases him; the people are just dead leaves, crushed by the tyrant’s weight, and then swept away.
The Orphan Master's Son is a four-hundred-plus narrative that is divided into two parts. First, we have the protagonist Pak Jun Do and his biography, while the other is the confessions of Commander Ga, the supposedly rival political figure of the then-current Great Leader himself, Kim Jong-Il. The first part is akin to a coming-of-age story for Jun Do who was the son of the caretaker of the orphanage Long Tomorrows. Jun Do named the orphans after martyrs from the Japanese-Korean strife, and he himself picked the name "Pak Jun Do" because of its personal significance to him (which is somewhat of a foreshadowing too). Jun Do believed that his father is unable to show his love because of the loss of his mother whom he insisted was a singer spirited away to Pyongyang because of her beauty and talent. This fantasy served as an ember of hope for him growing up, and he continued to cling to it quite fiercely even as an adult man. Its poignancy affected me greatly, most probably because Coben's Eric Wu also lost his mother (in the most horrendous way possible; she was tortured, executed then hanged in front of him--he was six years old). It's also a notable pattern for Jun Do to seek women as if each one is just another reflection of a mother he never had. This will consistently play out for the rest of the novel.
By the second part, a new character becomes the second narrator who relays certain key events in his perspective. He remained unnamed throughout the book and all that we really knew about him was that he was a dedicated worker; an interrogator who wishes to write biographies about the people who were captured and detained once they were considered as traitors or dissidents to the Kim regime. He strongly believed that what matters in the end when all is said and done would be the stories of individuals who will disappear and be long forgotten. In North Korea, people are expenditures whose relevance is always temporary, if not non-existent. This unnamed narrator acknowledges that which was why he develops an attachment to Commander Ga whose biography he desperately wants to write.
"Little by little, you relinquished everything, starting with your tomorrows and all that might be. Next went your past, and suddenly it was inconceivable that you once used a spoon or a toilet. Before you relinquish yourself, you let go of all the others, each person you'd once known. They became ideas and then notions and then impressions, and then they were as ghostly as projections against a prison infirmary."
Adam Johnson creates an ugly and harrowing yet memorable and moving portrait of what it must be like for North Korean families who live their lives in such a harsh landscape where all its hues have gone dark. It's a place where there they have to acquire and use ration cards for food, alcohol and cigarettes. It's where sex is not necessarily something you have to pay for, so long as you have coupon books that can be stamped every time you were with a prostitute. Everything right from the basic needs is organized by your government, including vices and indulgences. In The Orphan Master's Son, we can read about Jun Do's personal encounters with failed defections, as well as participating in outright abductions of Japanese citizens who are unfortunate enough to stand near the ocean where the perpetrators can grab them and take them away forever.
This is a place of constant propaganda blaring on loudspeakers; where its movies are singularly centered around the portrayal of North Korea as both the victim of American corruption who rose as a champion against the filth of its capitalism. These films always have the actress Sun Moon as its only lead, and she is considered a national icon handpicked by the Great Leader himself, and she later on becomes the reason why Jun Do started to desire things beyond the confines of his cage.
North Korea is where prison and labor camps await families of anyone who tries to leave the country, and where widows must receive replacement husbands as assigned by the government. In North Korea, dogs are not household pets but rather illegal wild animals kept in zoos. These are the situations author Johnson chooses to depict and they become increasingly more significant later on in the story. The protagonist Pak Jun Do, in spite of the consuming darkness that shaped and distorted his life, possesses a light that can never be extinguished even when he was not aware of it himself at first. In spite of being programmed early on to accept the casual cruelty of his surroundings, if not directly implement it on others, Jun Do was still capable of compassion and insight which allowed him to develop a keen sense of curiosity and sense of justice for lives he unintentionally had to destroy to make it out alive. While most people in that environment have become passive of their impoverished state, Jun Do slowly begins to question the status quo as he searches for a freedom he had never known is something we all fundamentally deserve and strive for. With knowledge of the outside world naturally comes the desire to become a part of it after all.
This is a place of constant propaganda blaring on loudspeakers; where its movies are singularly centered around the portrayal of North Korea as both the victim of American corruption who rose as a champion against the filth of its capitalism. These films always have the actress Sun Moon as its only lead, and she is considered a national icon handpicked by the Great Leader himself, and she later on becomes the reason why Jun Do started to desire things beyond the confines of his cage.
North Korea is where prison and labor camps await families of anyone who tries to leave the country, and where widows must receive replacement husbands as assigned by the government. In North Korea, dogs are not household pets but rather illegal wild animals kept in zoos. These are the situations author Johnson chooses to depict and they become increasingly more significant later on in the story. The protagonist Pak Jun Do, in spite of the consuming darkness that shaped and distorted his life, possesses a light that can never be extinguished even when he was not aware of it himself at first. In spite of being programmed early on to accept the casual cruelty of his surroundings, if not directly implement it on others, Jun Do was still capable of compassion and insight which allowed him to develop a keen sense of curiosity and sense of justice for lives he unintentionally had to destroy to make it out alive. While most people in that environment have become passive of their impoverished state, Jun Do slowly begins to question the status quo as he searches for a freedom he had never known is something we all fundamentally deserve and strive for. With knowledge of the outside world naturally comes the desire to become a part of it after all.
"Intimate," he said. "I do not know this word."
"You know, close," Wanda replied, "When two people share everything, when there are no secrets between them."
"You know, close," Wanda replied, "When two people share everything, when there are no secrets between them."
After being rewarded for stopping a co-worker from defecting, Jun Do was sent to a Language school where he learned English. He began staying in a fishing vessel as a communications expert whose job function is to listen and record radio transmissions. A notable one belonged to a pair of American female athletes who dared themselves to row a boat across the world. He finds himself drawn to the one who rows at night and her audio journals of the trip which filled him with a sense of unnamed longing. In the ship, he develops a camaraderie with the Captain who was almost like a father figure to him, and the Second Mate who later on tries to defect.
This fishing expedition part of the first installment has to be my most favorite arc of the book. It left me with a sense of hope and dread all at once because of how intense and gruelling the experiences of Jun Do and the crew are once they encountered a group of American soldiers. I feared for their lives, honestly, and found their resourcefulness during and after that event to be amusing as well as pitiful.
It was by this part of the story that we become more intimate with how deep and crippling the fear that North Koreans have towards their own government that they are willing to invent tales to evade the possibility of being arrested and tortured for treason.
My second favorite arc has to be when Jun Do was requested to come to the United States, specifically to Texas, as a civilian representative of the DPRK together with two other officials, and they met with a state senator, the federal agent that Jun Do only knew as Wanda, and the senator's Christian wife. This is where Jun Do was able to interact with foreigners (specifically Wanda) and their cultural differences are immediately vast, where both of them are unknowable to each other. Wanda asked him if he ever felt free and Jun Do has a different concept and definition for what 'freedom' is in his country, as well as what love and beauty is for someone who grew up in a place seemingly bereft of such things. Jun Do was also able to make a brief connection with the Senator's wife who was touched by Jun Do's story concerning the actress Sun Moon whom he has learned to pretend to be his wife while he was at sea. Her face had been tattooed to his chest because the Captain insisted on it for the sake of maintaining his cover as part of their crew.
Pak Jun Do never ceases to be such an engrossing voice of the narrative. Reading him becoming aware of his own autonomy and personal desires has evoked powerful emotions from me, considering I've always been fairly individualistic myself. To live a life not knowing real independence or not having the ability to make my own choices is something so frightening to me in a visceral level which is probably why this novel has gripped me with possessive claws and refused to let me go every time I turned a page. It's a rather exhilarating experience!
This fishing expedition part of the first installment has to be my most favorite arc of the book. It left me with a sense of hope and dread all at once because of how intense and gruelling the experiences of Jun Do and the crew are once they encountered a group of American soldiers. I feared for their lives, honestly, and found their resourcefulness during and after that event to be amusing as well as pitiful.
It was by this part of the story that we become more intimate with how deep and crippling the fear that North Koreans have towards their own government that they are willing to invent tales to evade the possibility of being arrested and tortured for treason.
My second favorite arc has to be when Jun Do was requested to come to the United States, specifically to Texas, as a civilian representative of the DPRK together with two other officials, and they met with a state senator, the federal agent that Jun Do only knew as Wanda, and the senator's Christian wife. This is where Jun Do was able to interact with foreigners (specifically Wanda) and their cultural differences are immediately vast, where both of them are unknowable to each other. Wanda asked him if he ever felt free and Jun Do has a different concept and definition for what 'freedom' is in his country, as well as what love and beauty is for someone who grew up in a place seemingly bereft of such things. Jun Do was also able to make a brief connection with the Senator's wife who was touched by Jun Do's story concerning the actress Sun Moon whom he has learned to pretend to be his wife while he was at sea. Her face had been tattooed to his chest because the Captain insisted on it for the sake of maintaining his cover as part of their crew.
Pak Jun Do never ceases to be such an engrossing voice of the narrative. Reading him becoming aware of his own autonomy and personal desires has evoked powerful emotions from me, considering I've always been fairly individualistic myself. To live a life not knowing real independence or not having the ability to make my own choices is something so frightening to me in a visceral level which is probably why this novel has gripped me with possessive claws and refused to let me go every time I turned a page. It's a rather exhilarating experience!
"He had been raised in an environment that stressed the power of men and the subordination of women, but Eric Wu had always found it to be more hope than truth. Women were harder. They were more unpredictable. They handled physical pain better--he knew this from personal experience. When it came to protecting their loved ones, they were far more ruthless. Men would sacrifice themselves out of machismo or stupidity or the blind belief that they would be victorious. Women would sacrifice themselves without self-deception."
~Just One Look, Harlan Coben
~Just One Look, Harlan Coben
The women in Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son are the central figures and often catalysts that inspired Pak Jun Do to seek liberation, autonomy and intimacy. From the fantasy of his mother whom he never met, Jun Do would find himself feeling for each suffering woman he became acquainted with throughout the book. We have the Second Mate's wife, a great beauty who wanted to travel to Pyongyang to be an actress, hoping she has a shot of a better life by starring in movies. There's the federal agent Wanda who was willing to listen and encourage Jun Do to form his opinions and she unknowingly helps him figure out that there are certain liberties he wants to achieve by living as a person who can make his own choices outside of government control. There's also the Senator's wife who expresses her sadness over the fact that Jun Do has no religion or spirituality to keep him afloat, and tries to give him a gift he can bring home to his wife Sun Moon, his pretend-spouse.
To a lesser extent, we also have the American female athlete who rowed at night. She was then detained by North Korean coast guards and was offered as a special prisoner to Kim Jong-Il. Jun Do also becomes friends with a woman named Mongnan in a labor camp at the mines and she was rumoured to be a former university professor who, along some of her students in class, publicly protested the injustices of the Kim government.
Of all this women, the one who stands apart is the deceptively delicate Sun Moon who is favored personally by the Great Leader so he made her the sole star of all his propaganda movies. She was the treasure of the big screen, and the roles she played as an actress have endeared her to the nation and its citizens. The rest of the second part of the book is devoted to the dynamics and gradual relationship between Jun Do and Sun Moon, and his plans to help her and her children defect from North Korea. Theirs is not a story of easy romance; one might argue it was born out of coincidence and convenience, and they may not be wrong. But their relationship can't also be simplified that harshly because it was through Jun Do that Sun Moon finally found the courage and means to get out of the unhealthy arrangement she has with the Great Leader, while she in return taught Jun Do the meaning of sacrifice and love, as well the gift of song and completeness.
To a lesser extent, we also have the American female athlete who rowed at night. She was then detained by North Korean coast guards and was offered as a special prisoner to Kim Jong-Il. Jun Do also becomes friends with a woman named Mongnan in a labor camp at the mines and she was rumoured to be a former university professor who, along some of her students in class, publicly protested the injustices of the Kim government.
Of all this women, the one who stands apart is the deceptively delicate Sun Moon who is favored personally by the Great Leader so he made her the sole star of all his propaganda movies. She was the treasure of the big screen, and the roles she played as an actress have endeared her to the nation and its citizens. The rest of the second part of the book is devoted to the dynamics and gradual relationship between Jun Do and Sun Moon, and his plans to help her and her children defect from North Korea. Theirs is not a story of easy romance; one might argue it was born out of coincidence and convenience, and they may not be wrong. But their relationship can't also be simplified that harshly because it was through Jun Do that Sun Moon finally found the courage and means to get out of the unhealthy arrangement she has with the Great Leader, while she in return taught Jun Do the meaning of sacrifice and love, as well the gift of song and completeness.
"Oh, I know what you are. You know what that is?
You're a survivor with nothing to live for.
Wouldn't you rather die for something you cared about?"
You're a survivor with nothing to live for.
Wouldn't you rather die for something you cared about?"
Overall, reading The Orphan Master's Son has to be the most intimate way I have ever experienced a work of fiction. It was tantalizing and enduring in vision and message. I think my fixation for North Korea found a more grounded purpose because of what this novel personally symbolized for me.
Though it's punishingly intricate to read, it was also supremely masterful in every way, reeling me in completely until I felt as though I am also a captive myself. This novel is a daring feat of imagination that examines and challenges our own convictions and beliefs about what it truly means to be free by showing us what oppression, hunger and poverty feels and tastes like. We often neglect and take for granted how blessed we are for the many options and opportunities we have in our lives every day, and The Orphan Master's Son is the kind of book that reaffirms exactly that, if not shame us with our own ignorance, self-entitlement and privilege.
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
April 2015
Two years ago, I spotted Palace Walk in a bookshelf and thought that this might be an interesting read because the last time I encountered a story that has something to do with Muslim culture was in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and that was it. Still, I always strive to expand my preferences and immerse myself on literature that is more culturally diverse than I'm more used to. In all honesty, I also selected to buy this particular book because of the Nobel Prize Awardee label attached to it.
So trusting that alone, I essentially went blind purchasing this novel, not knowing what to expect. I didn't even research about the book afterwards, and only done so once I finally finished it last night during a four-day Holy Week vacation at a beach resort. |
In addition to reading Magneto Testament (which I just finished under an hour) Palace Walk has filled my humid, sea-drenched days with unexpected humor and entertainment each time I turn its pages, because this was actually a witty book filled with cultural and psychological insights on a lifestyle and struggle I was never very familiar with, but could very much deeply relate to nonetheless. It was rather shocking for me then, to be this insatiably riveted about a novel that mainly derives its drama and development from one family that's composed of some of the most well-rounded, compelling and sympathetic characters I have ever come across in literature.
I was mistaken to believe this is going to be an intimidating and difficult novel to peruse through (much like The Kite Runner which could be grueling and depressing at times). I really thought this would be challenging in a sense that its exploration or themes would be dark and serious but I was pleased to have been misled by that first impression. Palace Walk is an utter delight, and a novel I can definitely say is very much character-centered in its approach and exposition. Writer Naguib Mafouz found his story's core strength and purpose by ensuring that these characters that readers would get to spend time with are always engaging and vibrant that we never stopped caring about them for a second. I may not always agree with certain characters' habits, temperament and actions but Mafouz has shown brilliant caliber because he managed to infuse just the right details concerning their personal lives that readers can't help but sympathize with them anyway.
Set in 1917 in Cairo, Egypt during the first World War, the novel could have stressed and divulged more on the political climate which had engulfed the place and its constituents at the time, but in all honesty we never truly touch upon that until the last hundred pages or so of this five-hundred-paged book. What the writer chose to dwell on instead is the Abd al-Jawad family who is the integral part of the overall narrative structure for Palace Walk. The author spent a great majority of the story tackling the inner conflicts and dynamics present within this household with the father al-Sayyid Ahmad, his doting and subservient wife Amina, and their three sons (Yasin, Fahmy and Kamal) and two daughters (Khadija and Aisha). Their roles, personalities and relationships with each other never fail to be a source of not only endless amusement for me, but also substantial reflections about social issues.
As awfully entertaining Palace Walk has been in the way the writer dwelt with much of the interactions and scenes using wit and humor, Mafouz was also able to tackle general sensitive issues with sheer elegance and understanding, and they concern mostly of the submissive parts that women in general play during that time as dictated by their religious practices, as well as the pronounced gender dichotomy and bias that are so ridiculous through our modern perception by now. Now I have never considered myself a staunch feminist but it did make me wonder if there are particular scenarios in this book that might possibly offend me if I did view it as a feminist in the first place (which, by the way, I never claimed to be).
My own socio-political leanings aside, I was still very much appalled with the fact that the Muslim women in this book are not allowed to go to school or learn issues from the outside world. Their needs must always coincide with the men in their family, and their duties and fulfillment should always be centered around domesticity and homemaking. I think this has always been the case though some Islam-based countries have started to radically change these old-world practices. But taking into account the times this book was written in, I suppose I can understand why this is the way women are portrayed because it's an honest depiction of the lives they led at the time.
Regardless, I believe Mahfouz has written these themes with surprising optimism that blended so well with the tactful way he approached the issue. I never felt bad for the women. In fact, I developed genuine admiration for them with the way they managed to find the smallest joys even if I can't for the life of me imagine living such a heavily restricted existence where I'm not allowed to study in school, form my opinions and speak my mind, make my own choices and find a career other than being a housewife and mother. I try to avoid contextualizing my modern sensibilities as I read Palace Walk though, and doing so has made me enjoyed the novel and the characters a lot more.
For me to further illustrate this gender dichotomy for this review, let's take the mother Amina as an example. She is one of my top favorites and I find her to be impressive in spirit and character. She is virtuous and steadfast in her devotion to her philandering husband, and possesses a naturally curious mind that never truly realizes its potentials only because of the limitations that precede her gender. Her only means to learn about new information is through her sons who adore her enough to include her in their intellectual debates and discussions some of the time. It was mentioned later on that there are women who are allowed by their husbands to go outside every once in a while, but Amina's husband al Sayyid-Ahmad is just too much of a conservative and controlling patriarch that wants to dominate everyone in his household. The thing that really pisses me off about this man is that he's a hypocrite. He maintains a false façade around his family while living a completely hedonistic life when he's around his co-workers and multiple lovers. Later on I began to pity him because he was always so concerned about keeping up appearances that his children have only known how to fear him and not love him. That's I think is the greatest tragedy for a father but I don't think he will ever realize this, nor is it a concern of his.
As for the children, I really loved the eldest daughter Khadija and the youngest Kamal. Khadija is definitely relatable because she is opinionated and shows a lot of intelligence which sadly only gets to shine through her deflective use of sarcasm to cover up her insecurities. Much of her conflict revolves around being unmarried at twenty and the preference of suitors and potentials husbands to her younger sister Aisha whom I find only remarkable in beauty and not in personality. Kamal, on the other hand, is inquisitive and playful, always living in his imagination and daydreams which makes him often a problem for his family. I love him very much though because of his inclination to learn and his outward sunny disposition even if his father disapproves of him, as well as his affectionate relationships with his mother and sisters which I hope will stay the same even when he grows older.
The older two sons, Yasin and Fahmy, are well-written characters themselves. Yasin is the son from al-Sayyid Ahmad's first marriage and he is probably the closest one who mirrors his father in a lot of ways, mostly his unflattering and vain qualities such as the way he perceives women and wrongly asserts his morality for the sake of a false sense of masculine security. Again, as much as I dislike both of these men, I can understand why they believe they have a right to live their lives according only to their pleasure and whims, with callous disregard of the way their loved ones would feel. Meanwhile, Fahmy is the second son who is an aspiring lawyer and is very much interested to involve himself in the inner workings of politics which I think could lead to some potentially disastrous results especially since they are living during wartime. I like Fahmy enough because aside from Kamal who is still fairly young, he doesn't seem to be that preoccupied with lustful adventures unlike his father and brother, and finds more satisfaction in scholarly matters. Still, the truth remains that the gender dichotomy that their culture and society permeates is harmful in this sense, I believe. Though the men are free to be who they want to be, they are still equally oppressed because they also feel that they have to play parts that serve to hide who they are and how they feel inside, all for the sake of machismo and patriarchy.
Basically, the selling point of this novel is that it's well-balanced; there are light and funny parts, as well as serious discussions about religion and political strife; all the while the author himself took much care and sensitivity in regards to the way he characterized his protagonists in the context of their own belief systems that may not always be agreeable but were articulated authentically enough to merit some contemplation. This book is also part of a trilogy, and I will certainly pick up the next two books because I am intrigued and invested on the world that Mahfouz has created. Palace Walk excels in the exploration of the day-to-day pressures, self-reflection and relationships of its characters. As a reader, I can't help but care about their welfare even with Yasin and al-Sayyid Ahmad whom I only have lukewarm feelings for. I was able to celebrate the joys and despair the losses that these characters experienced as I glided comfortably through the pages, and I think that alone makes this novel very commendable and worth the read.
Overall, Palace Walk is humorous, insightful and easily enjoyable. If you like character-centered plots and family drama in general then this book might appeal to you. It doesn't take itself that seriously and when it does, it can be warm and sublime in a lot of aspects, allowing readers to appreciate and value the richness of their own beliefs and idiosyncrasies as contrasted or reflected by the Abd al-Jawad family's own.
I was mistaken to believe this is going to be an intimidating and difficult novel to peruse through (much like The Kite Runner which could be grueling and depressing at times). I really thought this would be challenging in a sense that its exploration or themes would be dark and serious but I was pleased to have been misled by that first impression. Palace Walk is an utter delight, and a novel I can definitely say is very much character-centered in its approach and exposition. Writer Naguib Mafouz found his story's core strength and purpose by ensuring that these characters that readers would get to spend time with are always engaging and vibrant that we never stopped caring about them for a second. I may not always agree with certain characters' habits, temperament and actions but Mafouz has shown brilliant caliber because he managed to infuse just the right details concerning their personal lives that readers can't help but sympathize with them anyway.
Set in 1917 in Cairo, Egypt during the first World War, the novel could have stressed and divulged more on the political climate which had engulfed the place and its constituents at the time, but in all honesty we never truly touch upon that until the last hundred pages or so of this five-hundred-paged book. What the writer chose to dwell on instead is the Abd al-Jawad family who is the integral part of the overall narrative structure for Palace Walk. The author spent a great majority of the story tackling the inner conflicts and dynamics present within this household with the father al-Sayyid Ahmad, his doting and subservient wife Amina, and their three sons (Yasin, Fahmy and Kamal) and two daughters (Khadija and Aisha). Their roles, personalities and relationships with each other never fail to be a source of not only endless amusement for me, but also substantial reflections about social issues.
As awfully entertaining Palace Walk has been in the way the writer dwelt with much of the interactions and scenes using wit and humor, Mafouz was also able to tackle general sensitive issues with sheer elegance and understanding, and they concern mostly of the submissive parts that women in general play during that time as dictated by their religious practices, as well as the pronounced gender dichotomy and bias that are so ridiculous through our modern perception by now. Now I have never considered myself a staunch feminist but it did make me wonder if there are particular scenarios in this book that might possibly offend me if I did view it as a feminist in the first place (which, by the way, I never claimed to be).
My own socio-political leanings aside, I was still very much appalled with the fact that the Muslim women in this book are not allowed to go to school or learn issues from the outside world. Their needs must always coincide with the men in their family, and their duties and fulfillment should always be centered around domesticity and homemaking. I think this has always been the case though some Islam-based countries have started to radically change these old-world practices. But taking into account the times this book was written in, I suppose I can understand why this is the way women are portrayed because it's an honest depiction of the lives they led at the time.
Regardless, I believe Mahfouz has written these themes with surprising optimism that blended so well with the tactful way he approached the issue. I never felt bad for the women. In fact, I developed genuine admiration for them with the way they managed to find the smallest joys even if I can't for the life of me imagine living such a heavily restricted existence where I'm not allowed to study in school, form my opinions and speak my mind, make my own choices and find a career other than being a housewife and mother. I try to avoid contextualizing my modern sensibilities as I read Palace Walk though, and doing so has made me enjoyed the novel and the characters a lot more.
For me to further illustrate this gender dichotomy for this review, let's take the mother Amina as an example. She is one of my top favorites and I find her to be impressive in spirit and character. She is virtuous and steadfast in her devotion to her philandering husband, and possesses a naturally curious mind that never truly realizes its potentials only because of the limitations that precede her gender. Her only means to learn about new information is through her sons who adore her enough to include her in their intellectual debates and discussions some of the time. It was mentioned later on that there are women who are allowed by their husbands to go outside every once in a while, but Amina's husband al Sayyid-Ahmad is just too much of a conservative and controlling patriarch that wants to dominate everyone in his household. The thing that really pisses me off about this man is that he's a hypocrite. He maintains a false façade around his family while living a completely hedonistic life when he's around his co-workers and multiple lovers. Later on I began to pity him because he was always so concerned about keeping up appearances that his children have only known how to fear him and not love him. That's I think is the greatest tragedy for a father but I don't think he will ever realize this, nor is it a concern of his.
As for the children, I really loved the eldest daughter Khadija and the youngest Kamal. Khadija is definitely relatable because she is opinionated and shows a lot of intelligence which sadly only gets to shine through her deflective use of sarcasm to cover up her insecurities. Much of her conflict revolves around being unmarried at twenty and the preference of suitors and potentials husbands to her younger sister Aisha whom I find only remarkable in beauty and not in personality. Kamal, on the other hand, is inquisitive and playful, always living in his imagination and daydreams which makes him often a problem for his family. I love him very much though because of his inclination to learn and his outward sunny disposition even if his father disapproves of him, as well as his affectionate relationships with his mother and sisters which I hope will stay the same even when he grows older.
The older two sons, Yasin and Fahmy, are well-written characters themselves. Yasin is the son from al-Sayyid Ahmad's first marriage and he is probably the closest one who mirrors his father in a lot of ways, mostly his unflattering and vain qualities such as the way he perceives women and wrongly asserts his morality for the sake of a false sense of masculine security. Again, as much as I dislike both of these men, I can understand why they believe they have a right to live their lives according only to their pleasure and whims, with callous disregard of the way their loved ones would feel. Meanwhile, Fahmy is the second son who is an aspiring lawyer and is very much interested to involve himself in the inner workings of politics which I think could lead to some potentially disastrous results especially since they are living during wartime. I like Fahmy enough because aside from Kamal who is still fairly young, he doesn't seem to be that preoccupied with lustful adventures unlike his father and brother, and finds more satisfaction in scholarly matters. Still, the truth remains that the gender dichotomy that their culture and society permeates is harmful in this sense, I believe. Though the men are free to be who they want to be, they are still equally oppressed because they also feel that they have to play parts that serve to hide who they are and how they feel inside, all for the sake of machismo and patriarchy.
Basically, the selling point of this novel is that it's well-balanced; there are light and funny parts, as well as serious discussions about religion and political strife; all the while the author himself took much care and sensitivity in regards to the way he characterized his protagonists in the context of their own belief systems that may not always be agreeable but were articulated authentically enough to merit some contemplation. This book is also part of a trilogy, and I will certainly pick up the next two books because I am intrigued and invested on the world that Mahfouz has created. Palace Walk excels in the exploration of the day-to-day pressures, self-reflection and relationships of its characters. As a reader, I can't help but care about their welfare even with Yasin and al-Sayyid Ahmad whom I only have lukewarm feelings for. I was able to celebrate the joys and despair the losses that these characters experienced as I glided comfortably through the pages, and I think that alone makes this novel very commendable and worth the read.
Overall, Palace Walk is humorous, insightful and easily enjoyable. If you like character-centered plots and family drama in general then this book might appeal to you. It doesn't take itself that seriously and when it does, it can be warm and sublime in a lot of aspects, allowing readers to appreciate and value the richness of their own beliefs and idiosyncrasies as contrasted or reflected by the Abd al-Jawad family's own.
The Painted Bird by Jerzi Kosinski
April 2015
On deciding for the title of this novel, writer Jerzy Kosinki was inspired by the symbolic use of birds in literature which "allowed certain people to deal with actual events and characters without the restrictions which the writing of history imposes". He states that there was a certain peasant custom he witnessed as a child before in which he describes it as follows: "One of the villagers' favorite entertainment was trapping birds, painting their feathers, and then releasing them in the air to rejoin their flock. As these brightly colored creatures sought the safety of their fellows, the other birds, seeing them as threatening aliens, attacked and tore at the outcasts until they killed them." |
Due to the controversial nature and content of this book, I was surprised that I even stumbled upon a copy about a year ago while once again casually flipping through the general section of a bookstore. I've only known about the book months prior to acquiring it, and I was so excited to start reading it on a scheduled time. Some months later, I did just that and for two days I was immersed in witnessing the ugliest and most vile horrors I have ever read in fiction that were loosely based from real-life accounts of people who lived through the second World War.
There was nothing about this book I enjoyed, to be honest. It was psychologically painful and slightly numbing to peruse through, especially with each chapter dealing with deprived deviant acts of the social and sexual kind. That being said, this is a spectacular novel that examines the darker and sickening aspects of human nature, and it was successful in its depiction because I don't think any decent person would enjoy the varying degrees of cruelty and degradation that Kosinski have shared in The Painted Bird.
The Painted Bird follows the travels of a six-year-old Jewish boy in Central Europe, and whose parents have sent him away in beliefs that he would fare better away from the heart of the warfare and Nazism at the time. What happens mainly instead over the course of the book is that the boy was forced to grow up very quickly, robbed of another option, as he stays in one village after another, more often discriminated against, beaten up and rarely cared for. As a book that deals with the Holocaust, Kosinski managed to stay away from events surrounding the actual prison or labor camps where the Jews were gassed or incinerated. We all know that's where the real horror lies but Kosinski challenged this idea and revealed to us that in times of warfare, even the most modest of places such as rural villages can be sources of the most potent evil human beings are capable of.
This book delved deeply on the shocking ways that antisemitic sentiment, religious persecution and barbaric superstitions could turn people into hateful creatures; that even the simple folk back then can and will ruefully participate in terrible acts, often justifying their malicious intentions as divine interventions, against the boy himself, and any Jewish or Gypsy person of the same ilk who would pass their way. I don't think it's worth specifying these truly disgusting and abhorrent events here in my review, mostly because I'm still sick to my stomach just thinking about them. Even the subtlest ways of these people when it comes to their maltreatment of the boy just because he has black hair and dark eyes (and therefore an abomination to God) were chilling in retrospect. So, yes, I did not enjoy reading this book but I was fully hypnotized into trudging along each chapter anyway.
I could then claim that this was a great exercise on moral conscience and inherent human compassion on the end of the readers such as myself who have developed a certain keen sense of cynicism over the years regarding the world at large. I am not shocked easily by gory details but I have to admit that this book made me feel bad every time I try to insert some humor in my initial thoughts in Goodreads for the reading updates while reading. It doesn't feel like a subject to be made light of, personally, but it was also the only way I can endure reading the chapters--I had to find some sort of morbid amusement and detachment just so I don't get thoroughly disheartened.
What was so moving about this novel, however, was the main character of the boy who remains unnamed throughout, but whose iron will and resilient youth had made it possible for him to come out on the other side alive, though fragmented and forever changed. Children are tougher than we give them credit for, and I was comforted with the fact that he was resourceful in adapting to multiple situations where his own life and innocence are fully at stake. This book features tons of examples of mob mentality (the likes of which are awfully symbolized by the painted-birds analogy Kosinski has utilized), as well as separate incidents of incest and bestiality, and a rather disconcerting abundance of gang rapes at the later part of the book where a whole chapter is devoted describing the entire thing in painstakingly gross detail. This is not a book meant for enjoyment so if you happen to decide you want to read it, please remember what I just said in this review.
The Painted Bird also operates on the wisdom that there are no happy lives, just happy moments, and about fifty pages near the end, the readers are allowed to view snapshots of the boy's life in the aftermath of the fall of the Third Reich and though there was nothing immediately uplifting about it, it's the best happy ending he could make out of from the traumatic experiences that have shaped him, and malformed him somehow. Personally, I didn't expect that there's going to be a healing message by the end of this tragic tale anyway. I think the ambiguity of the resolution for The Painted Bird accomplishes what it was set out to do in the first place: to remind readers that the darkness hovering in our lives is real and it could seep through the cracks, whether or not we allow it.
But the real test of courage and spiritual enlightenment is on how we cope and deal with the poison that corrodes our systems, and I would like to believe against hope that we can rise above our own base impulses towards hatred, ignorance and persecution. There is corruption and sickness in the world, yes, but we all should strive to be the balm on its infected pores. The Painted Bird, after showing me so much inhumane and malicious acts that people do to each other, has also reminded me of my humanity and the blessings and burdens of ensuring I don't give in to the call of moral decay and disintegration of values, no matter how easy (and even remotely tempting) it is to be lesser beings.
There was nothing about this book I enjoyed, to be honest. It was psychologically painful and slightly numbing to peruse through, especially with each chapter dealing with deprived deviant acts of the social and sexual kind. That being said, this is a spectacular novel that examines the darker and sickening aspects of human nature, and it was successful in its depiction because I don't think any decent person would enjoy the varying degrees of cruelty and degradation that Kosinski have shared in The Painted Bird.
The Painted Bird follows the travels of a six-year-old Jewish boy in Central Europe, and whose parents have sent him away in beliefs that he would fare better away from the heart of the warfare and Nazism at the time. What happens mainly instead over the course of the book is that the boy was forced to grow up very quickly, robbed of another option, as he stays in one village after another, more often discriminated against, beaten up and rarely cared for. As a book that deals with the Holocaust, Kosinski managed to stay away from events surrounding the actual prison or labor camps where the Jews were gassed or incinerated. We all know that's where the real horror lies but Kosinski challenged this idea and revealed to us that in times of warfare, even the most modest of places such as rural villages can be sources of the most potent evil human beings are capable of.
This book delved deeply on the shocking ways that antisemitic sentiment, religious persecution and barbaric superstitions could turn people into hateful creatures; that even the simple folk back then can and will ruefully participate in terrible acts, often justifying their malicious intentions as divine interventions, against the boy himself, and any Jewish or Gypsy person of the same ilk who would pass their way. I don't think it's worth specifying these truly disgusting and abhorrent events here in my review, mostly because I'm still sick to my stomach just thinking about them. Even the subtlest ways of these people when it comes to their maltreatment of the boy just because he has black hair and dark eyes (and therefore an abomination to God) were chilling in retrospect. So, yes, I did not enjoy reading this book but I was fully hypnotized into trudging along each chapter anyway.
I could then claim that this was a great exercise on moral conscience and inherent human compassion on the end of the readers such as myself who have developed a certain keen sense of cynicism over the years regarding the world at large. I am not shocked easily by gory details but I have to admit that this book made me feel bad every time I try to insert some humor in my initial thoughts in Goodreads for the reading updates while reading. It doesn't feel like a subject to be made light of, personally, but it was also the only way I can endure reading the chapters--I had to find some sort of morbid amusement and detachment just so I don't get thoroughly disheartened.
What was so moving about this novel, however, was the main character of the boy who remains unnamed throughout, but whose iron will and resilient youth had made it possible for him to come out on the other side alive, though fragmented and forever changed. Children are tougher than we give them credit for, and I was comforted with the fact that he was resourceful in adapting to multiple situations where his own life and innocence are fully at stake. This book features tons of examples of mob mentality (the likes of which are awfully symbolized by the painted-birds analogy Kosinski has utilized), as well as separate incidents of incest and bestiality, and a rather disconcerting abundance of gang rapes at the later part of the book where a whole chapter is devoted describing the entire thing in painstakingly gross detail. This is not a book meant for enjoyment so if you happen to decide you want to read it, please remember what I just said in this review.
The Painted Bird also operates on the wisdom that there are no happy lives, just happy moments, and about fifty pages near the end, the readers are allowed to view snapshots of the boy's life in the aftermath of the fall of the Third Reich and though there was nothing immediately uplifting about it, it's the best happy ending he could make out of from the traumatic experiences that have shaped him, and malformed him somehow. Personally, I didn't expect that there's going to be a healing message by the end of this tragic tale anyway. I think the ambiguity of the resolution for The Painted Bird accomplishes what it was set out to do in the first place: to remind readers that the darkness hovering in our lives is real and it could seep through the cracks, whether or not we allow it.
But the real test of courage and spiritual enlightenment is on how we cope and deal with the poison that corrodes our systems, and I would like to believe against hope that we can rise above our own base impulses towards hatred, ignorance and persecution. There is corruption and sickness in the world, yes, but we all should strive to be the balm on its infected pores. The Painted Bird, after showing me so much inhumane and malicious acts that people do to each other, has also reminded me of my humanity and the blessings and burdens of ensuring I don't give in to the call of moral decay and disintegration of values, no matter how easy (and even remotely tempting) it is to be lesser beings.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
April 2015
No other book is as infectiously humorous and as enjoyably absurd as A Confederacy of Dunces. I would like to have met its author, John Kennedy Toole, someday, if it wasn't for the misfortune of his suicide eleven years prior to the publication of this cult classic-turned-mainstream sensation. I think this is the third Pulitzer award-winning novel that I have read since Middlesex and The Orphan Master's Son, and so far the streak of such critically-acclaimed pieces has yet to let me down. It took me a whole week to finish this book only because I had X-Men comics books squeezed in to read and review in between, but if they weren't there, I can honestly say that I would've finished Toole's book in just two days because even the grimy parts are so riveting.
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This was a gripping tale akin to superb situational comedies in television, composed of an ensemble of not-always-likable characters who misunderstand the intentions and needs of others including their own. That, to me, is the charm of A Confederacy of Dunces. Its pages were principally filled with people who are vivid and alive because its author has grounded them in realism that is not often flattering in portrayal and yet the characterizations remain curiously honest nonetheless.
Now I just found out that this is actually what one calls a "picaresque novel" which is defined as "a genre of prose fiction which depicts the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire."Think of this book's protagonist as the American equivalent of Don Quixote but a much more pitiful version--a breathing obese man of paradoxical inclinations and eccentric opinions about himself and the society named Ignatius J. Reily.
Now I just found out that this is actually what one calls a "picaresque novel" which is defined as "a genre of prose fiction which depicts the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style, with elements of comedy and satire."Think of this book's protagonist as the American equivalent of Don Quixote but a much more pitiful version--a breathing obese man of paradoxical inclinations and eccentric opinions about himself and the society named Ignatius J. Reily.
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
~Jonathan Swift
He is disillusioned and uniquely self-entitled; someone whose education and highbrow level of thinking have contributed to his bafflingly misanthropic views concerning his fellowmen and their vices and sins he perceived to be their only defining qualities. He is filled with resentment for the moral decay of his hometown, New Orleans during the 1960's, and attributes that to the various groups of minorities whom he believes corrupts the sanctity of the place. As outlandishly entertaining as he may be, I found myself growing increasingly weary and frustrated of him, especially when it came to the lamentations he'd write in his journal. He's the kind of grating idealist who puts more importance on his ideals and is comfortable upholding them in spirit only, and never does anything remotely valuable for it in practice. However, every time he would exercise some form of civil action, it often leads to clumsy and ridiculous scenarios which Toole writes about with such great wit and humor.
Comparing him to the endearing Don Quixote is an injustice of sorts because Ignatius is truly appalling because he is unmindful of how obnoxiously he treats his own mother, Irene, and the array of other secondary characters around him. For all his self-awareness and staunchly conservative views about morality, as well as his insistence on clinging to antique philosophical world views, Ignatius does not possess any kind of social intelligence whatsoever. I would have guessed that he might possibly belong somewhere in the autism spectrum. He is overtly meticulous of his clothing (he wears the same thing every day; that infuriating green hunting cap and red sweater) but ignores other forms of hygiene and personal neatness. He is an insufferable buffoon whose only redeeming facet is that he makes me laugh and I can't stop reading about the hilarious misunderstandings he gets caught up in.
The narrative of the book focuses mostly on Ignatius' "struggles" to find a decent job and the laughable ways he would sabotage his own means of livelihood because of his inherent tendency to impose intellectual superiority over the people he meets in workplaces. He is inconsiderate about everyone; he has low opinions about everything especially when they contradict his rigid moral codes, and he is essentially a hypocrite who will constantly fail to acknowledge himself as one even if he stares at himself in the mirror. He trivializes real social issues in exchange for his imagined ones which were so tone-deaf and goddamn outdated. His disillusion is only matched by his on-and-off college girlfriend Myrna Minkoff who considers herself a radical activist but is just as blinded and superficial in her crusades for social change. That being said, I enjoyed him endlessly as the main character. He was every bit of fascinating as much as a vehicular accident I cannot turn away from as it crashes over and over again.
Other characters were also so interesting to read because they were so well-defined by their mannerisms, language and thoughts every time they appear in the pages, often doing something crazy and desperate yet undeniably human and sympathetic that would earn chuckles from me every now and then. In fact, the most noticeable and commendable trait Toole deserves to be praised with is the way he creates lasting impressions on these characters through the way he makes them speak and communicate. Like any great satire, A Confederacy of Dunces relies a lot on situational ironies which are sprinkled in the scenes where characters would discuss certain things or be engaged in mundane-turned-bizarre scenarios that one cannot help but find them infectious and clever. Toole has a dark sense of humor yet a knack for impressive comedic timing in the way he sets up these situations. If this was ever adapted for a TV show or film, I think that all the dialogues should be kept intact. They're the novel's strongest suit.
Toole's own mother had insisted on getting this book published after her son's death, and I'm pleased that she persevered in that pursuit because it would have been a literary crime to keep this novel away from public consciousness. I loved every chapter and detail offered in . I have never been so touched or moved into a fit of giggles like this. As annoyed as I am by Ignatius, his journal ramblings dripping in condescension and sarcasm have been a source of joy for me. The bastard also has a lucky streak. I cannot tell you how infuriating it had been that after all the lives he accidentally ruined or made worse, Ignatius manages to walk out on everyone, unscathed. What a lucky son of a bitch.
But I wouldn't want to spoil you of the journey ahead of you if you happen to decide to adapt some good 'taste and decency' (as Ignatius himself would phrase it) to pick up this novel and experience the absurdities unfold for yourself. The front row seat to A Confederacy of Dunces will be the most engaging albeit confusing experience you will ever have in your life so I suggest you don't miss out. The book is vibrant and memorable; Toole's delivery is grounded by realistic characters accompanied by this heightened sense of entertainment that was only made possible through the perfect blended style of comedy and drama which its author both lovingly and crudely instilled in the text.
One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
May 2015
I have no obvious vices like smoking or drinking but this year, there were two books so far which had compelled me to indulge in these things. Upon finishing Patrick Suskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer two months ago, I immediately went to the nearest convenience store and bought a single cigarette stick to corrupt my lungs with; even just for that night because the reading experience was quite exceptional and I needed the taste of nicotine in my mouth to preserve it somehow.
Now, as I write this review, I suddenly had this overpowering craving to drink booze, and vodka, I find, has always had a soothing effect on me which was exactly what I needed to suckle on once I did finish the end of this novel. I'm drinking it right now as I type. |
"The story is always about someone, a man or woman, who didn't seem to fit into the world and always shocked people by misbehaving. There is the rebel who tries to destroy the social order and the follower who tries to please it. And then there was the witness; one who is transformed and enlightened from all this. The rebel, the follower and the witness. The two extremes and the resulting compromise."
I suppose like most people, I know of this book because of the movie starring Jack Nicholson in the lead role but I barely remember that film adaptation now because I think it had almost been a decade since I last saw it; which was great because at least I get to read this book with fresh eyes with only remnants of what I have watched from the movie sometimes resurfacing when I read a particular scene that I can somewhat recall seeing before. Nevertheless, reading Ken Kasey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has been really thrilling in spite of the narrative's slow-burn tendencies. Told in the first-person perspective of the Native American Chief Bromden, the book reads like a journal of personal experiences and interactions of this said character with the people he is co-existing with inside the 'loony bin' where the story majorly took place. There were even quick sketches of certain in between the pages which gives the narrative an authentic 'diary' feel to it.
Chief Bromden as the narrator for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is someone I would consider the most reliable of all the unreliable narrators out there (if that even makes sense). Because of his heritage, he usually keeps to himself, content on people assuming he's either deaf, mute or dumb--or all of the above. This is a man who prioritizes self-preservation and keeping up with the status quo, more so than any character in this book and that's mostly because he knows first-hand how being different will get one into trouble. He had been in several other mental institutions before and know of the small horrors and limited compensations that people who are considered 'unfit' have to undergo.
Through his eyes, readers get to acquaint themselves with the overall routine and the ridiculously inhibiting way of life that patients at the mental hospital he is currently committed in have no other choice but to live by. In charge of all this is the middle-aged re-inforcer of the most precise of rules, Nurse Ratched, whose staunch ways re-define a whole new level of totalitarian matriarchy.
I find Bromden's descriptions of her physical appearance, habits and eccentricities to be rather chilling since he always compares her to something of a detached automation than an actual living, breathing person with feelings of her own. Because of this limited perspective and insight, we never really get to see any kind of vulnerability or sympathetic trait from Nurse Ratched unless of course her perceived weaknesses are interpreted rather antagonistically not necessarily by Bromden himself but by the other male characters. If this was truly a nest of cuckoos then Nurse Ratched may as well be their mother bird and she governs every facet of their life and she often demonstrates her power and influence in the most gratingly passive-aggressive manner ever imaginable. There is certainly a matter of questioning the author's intent that somewhat demonizes female authority and I personally encourage that discussion because any criticism regarding its chauvinism towards its only main female character can now be raised and argued by readers of my generation. I do think Nurse Ratched is portrayed in a harsher light than needed and this is worth a discussion most probably because of her gender and what she directly (and in latent terms) symbolizes in relation to that.
Like any promising and compelling story on overthrowing the oppressive regime or taking away the control from the most inhumane of overlords, this book's knight-in-shining-armor is a less pristine version of said trope and this is realized in no other than Randle Patrick McMurphy, a gambler and recently diagnosed 'psychopath' who is all kinds of charming and disarming, much to the initial dread and eventual relief of the other patients including Bromden. McMurphy's very role and participation in the book is to create a shift in power dynamics among Nurse Ratched and her blabbering, passive and frightened patients. Through McMurphy's carefully cultivated chaos, the other male characters of this book started to recognize the seemingly small injustices and that they shouldn't have to put up with Nurse Ratched's deliberate manipulations. The maltreatment they are suffering was often described as rather mundane or inconsequential--such as the lack of enough free time to do other activities, or the refusal of the staff to cater to some more humane methods to pacify them--but their rights are still being violated little by little until these men are reduced into spineless fools who quiver at the sight of Nurse Ratched's shadow.
Clever and more than a match to Nurse Ratched's imposing authority, McMurphy quite literally gets the patients riled up, waking up these men from their once restful and lethargic states so they can have a more meaningful purpose than just take whatever the medical staff would give them, mediation or otherwise. McMurphy is not a saintly liberator, however, and Bromden recognizes that there is ego and impulse in every action that McMurphy commits; sometimes he deliberately tries to rattle the one in charge either to know that he could or to reap whatever kind of benefits he will receive if he did succeed. Nevertheless, Bromden becomes fond of him and so do the other patients because for the first time in a long time they have someone to look up to, someone to defend them and someone they can consider their friend against a nameless, overreaching system that oppresses them and makes them feel less human and more burdensome creatures who can never fully function outside the confines of the facility. It's a rather poignant affair especially when McMurphy realizes what he meant to these men and that he himself is beginning to care about them beyond seeing them as an audience he can perform his anarchist tricks for.
Bromden also grows midway through the book, realizing that he doesn't have to hide under 'the fog' anymore, not when McMurphy has shown him that the only person standing in the way of his freedom and self-esteem issues is himself and once Bromden overcame his insecurities and fears, his trauma of his past concerning his father has lessened, and he began to fight back against the same oppression that has him kneeling down for a very long time.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has some riveting social commentary regarding the function and tension of power constructs that also happens to include a scathing indictment of the health care system back then when it came to treating mentally damaged patients. The book also examines in a quite humorous but still piercingly philosophical way this inherent inclination of humans to rebel against an authority or refuse a system they perceive as demeaning and aggressive. There are plenty enough layers in this novel that readers can freely discuss and argue about for days.
Homer and Langley by E. L Doctorow
July 2015
"What do we really know? If every question is answered so that we know everything there is to know about life and the universe, what then? What will be different? The darkness will be there still. The deepest darkness. The darkness that is deeper than any sea-dingle." This was a book I was pleased to read among my Batman graphic novels for July, weekly marathon and subsequent reviews for Batman: The Animated Series, and an assortment of shoujo/josei manga. It was only two-hundred and a few pages long and had a languorous yet hardly wasteful prose, with a first-person narrative that manages to be contemplative in all the right places, even heartbreaking. |
A simple yet elegant story about brothers--one a blind and romantic musician as its storyteller; the other a cynical and aspiring philosopher with a penchant for collecting forgotten things--Homer and Langley follows their journey throughout distinct eras of American history, ranging from the two World Wars, the hippie, peace-loving late sixties to seventies, and the polarizing and tumultuous eighties which are the times the brothers still maintain an interactive yet somehow deteriorating contact with the outside world. By the nineties and as they reach old age, both Homer and Langley Collyer began to retreat further into their hermit lifestyle within the frugal comforts of their family house which had withstand and bore remnants of the decades that passed it by as seen from the trinkets and nostalgia-inducing objects left behind its quarters.
This was a strangely endearing novel, part-period piece and part-memoirs. It manages to be engaging in spite of the straightforward and linear storytelling. Nothing particularly exciting truly happens apart from the brother's encounters with a crime boss and the latter parts of the book where the Colliers became the talk of town because of their reclusive lifestyle and accumulating debts from public agencies. Homer as the first-person narrator is likeable enough. He is visually-impaired yet musically-inclined, describing the life he lived and experienced with his brother with such vivid richness in spite of his lack of sight. The transient relationships he had with other people always have a sad tinge to them most probably because of how deeply he allows himself to get attached, unguarded and unquestioning. He was such a romantic, highly contrasting his more stern and pragmatic brother. Langley is a philosophizing cynic who believes in the Theory of Replacements and yet he is a walking, talking and breathing contradiction.
While Homer is content exploring the world with an open understanding yet limited curiosity, Langley questions and challenges almost everything that comes his way, often becoming miserable and frustrated of the little terrible things humanity gets itself into. His major project is to compile a single global newspaper where he collected all necessary news events that should be preserved. He also had little side projects such as painting, believing he can somewhat restore Homer's sight through tactile recognition. He is a determined intellectual who in spite of his flawed and resistant nature against change is actually a decent and loving brother who remained loyal and devoted to Homer throughout their lives.
"I could only think of how easily people die. And then there was that feeling one gets in a ride to a cemetery trailing a body in a coffin--an impatience with the dead, a longing to be back home where one could get on with the illusion that not death but daily life is the permanent condition.
Homer and Langley reads as something you might hear from a pair of grandparents, in this case a couple of old men who are mismatched brothers and who surprisingly got along just fine even if their differences are so readily apparent. As a novel itself, it's not very action-oriented and only told in one perspective, with a few dialogues. But I genuinely found it such a quaint autobiography about a person's life rich with details of even the tiniest insecurities, tragedies and triumphs. Reading it was a breeze and I stayed emotionally invested enough on the brothers to see how their story wrapped up by the end of this book. I could recommend this novel because of how at ease it made me feel perusing it, and made me think about my grandfathers in both sides of the family who passed away before I was even a teenager.
This is what it would probably be like to learn about the daily grind of their lives from the past. I think my parents could easily have their own unique tales to impart in the future and I certainly think that theirs would have the same charm and poignancy as Homer and Langley's. Not the most thrilling or life-changing of books but this one is subtly enthralling in its own way. One of the few good examples of how a memoir can be written.
This was a strangely endearing novel, part-period piece and part-memoirs. It manages to be engaging in spite of the straightforward and linear storytelling. Nothing particularly exciting truly happens apart from the brother's encounters with a crime boss and the latter parts of the book where the Colliers became the talk of town because of their reclusive lifestyle and accumulating debts from public agencies. Homer as the first-person narrator is likeable enough. He is visually-impaired yet musically-inclined, describing the life he lived and experienced with his brother with such vivid richness in spite of his lack of sight. The transient relationships he had with other people always have a sad tinge to them most probably because of how deeply he allows himself to get attached, unguarded and unquestioning. He was such a romantic, highly contrasting his more stern and pragmatic brother. Langley is a philosophizing cynic who believes in the Theory of Replacements and yet he is a walking, talking and breathing contradiction.
While Homer is content exploring the world with an open understanding yet limited curiosity, Langley questions and challenges almost everything that comes his way, often becoming miserable and frustrated of the little terrible things humanity gets itself into. His major project is to compile a single global newspaper where he collected all necessary news events that should be preserved. He also had little side projects such as painting, believing he can somewhat restore Homer's sight through tactile recognition. He is a determined intellectual who in spite of his flawed and resistant nature against change is actually a decent and loving brother who remained loyal and devoted to Homer throughout their lives.
"I could only think of how easily people die. And then there was that feeling one gets in a ride to a cemetery trailing a body in a coffin--an impatience with the dead, a longing to be back home where one could get on with the illusion that not death but daily life is the permanent condition.
Homer and Langley reads as something you might hear from a pair of grandparents, in this case a couple of old men who are mismatched brothers and who surprisingly got along just fine even if their differences are so readily apparent. As a novel itself, it's not very action-oriented and only told in one perspective, with a few dialogues. But I genuinely found it such a quaint autobiography about a person's life rich with details of even the tiniest insecurities, tragedies and triumphs. Reading it was a breeze and I stayed emotionally invested enough on the brothers to see how their story wrapped up by the end of this book. I could recommend this novel because of how at ease it made me feel perusing it, and made me think about my grandfathers in both sides of the family who passed away before I was even a teenager.
This is what it would probably be like to learn about the daily grind of their lives from the past. I think my parents could easily have their own unique tales to impart in the future and I certainly think that theirs would have the same charm and poignancy as Homer and Langley's. Not the most thrilling or life-changing of books but this one is subtly enthralling in its own way. One of the few good examples of how a memoir can be written.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
November 2015
We lose more than we gain and these losses always resonate. They have very sharp edges and far-reaching sounds. They are both unique to every person, and universal to all. The impact of never having them again is just something we could never quantify. The world we live in is populated with the ghosts of those we loved--those who were claimed by the dark, and continue to haunt us long after they perished. A loss can hurt a person too deep that there is no way to swim back to the surface, even more so when the option of sinking is so tempting. A loss can ignite us with a purpose too. When love is forfeit and must be restored again, others would seek out answers to questions that could never offer closure. The search for that ultimate puzzle piece, the despair in trying to move forward, the grating incomprehension of sorrow and guilt--the weight of it all is far too great, too intangible, too heavy to ever carry ahead, let alone fully understand. But we have to try anyway.
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"Our situation is this. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open."
~Albert Einstein
~Albert Einstein
Tragedies force us to examine the state of our relationships and perspective about the things we can't see or define, and when they occur so suddenly as they often do, it curses us with the opportunity to change, the burden of insight. We learn to die far more often we can count, but we also get to live again--either reborn as stronger people, or become mere empty shells.
Author Jonathan Safran Foer attempts to capture the overwhelming mystery of what loss (as well as guilt) can do to us, as well as the shocking simplicity of the things between them. In his 9-11 tragedy-inspired novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer shaped a fascinating story told in the eyes of a nine-year-old Jewish boy named Oskar Schell who is coping with the death of his father, Thomas, after the terrorist attacks. Smart, inquisitive but still very young and so naive of the ways of adults, Oskar embarks on a journey to preserve the memory of his father by reading too much into clues and making up theories along the way concerning the last few things his father had done before he was killed during 9-11.
He retraces the steps of his father's habits, and explores the places he had been weeks before until he became obsessed with visiting every person in the six boroughs of his neighborhood with the surname 'Black', believing he or she may be the last person his father talked to before he went to work and died. His most prized object was the key his father left behind, wishing it will lead to some secret or revelation, regardless of whatever it is. Oskar is not the only POV narrator of this novel, however. Between his journal entries faithfully cataloging every minuscule detail of his adventures are the letters shared by his paternal grandparents. The grandmother writes to Oskar, retelling the story of how she met and fell in love with her husband who left before Oskar's father was even born. The grandfather, Thomas Sr., on the other hand, writes to his late son whom he had never met, but now he was willing to connect with his estranged wife in the wake of their son's unexpected demise in 9-11. Their respective entries serve as breaks from Oskar's own, but they have to be the saddest pieces of writing I have ever read from two people who struggle to make a life together but couldn't figure out why it was worth having one together in the first place.
The climactic meeting between Thomas Sr. and Oskar at the very last hundred pages or so of the book was a quiet moment filled with both meaningful and pointless conversation. It was also when Oskar finally confesses as to why he couldn't stop missing his father, and why he had been trying to solve a mystery he may have pinned all his hopes to, mostly because it was the only thing left of his father he can hold onto.
What he had always wanted in the end was forgiveness. As perceptive and brave as Oskar was during the coping process, he remains a child of nine years; selfish, narrow-minded, innocent and optimistic. He's far too young to face such a harrowing existential crisis, but that inner conflict is what drives the spectacular quality of this novel.
I think Foer's narrative style and stylistic language overall have an impressive breadth; the descriptions are so uninhibited and very detailed, yet also quirky and sporadic that the incoherent ramblings of each of its three major narrators can be very poetic and poignant, if not altogether exhausting to peruse. I can liken Oskar to Christopher John Francis Boone from Mark Haddon's A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime because I think Oskar may also have a developmental disorder and may even be in the autism spectrum. He sure is a strange child with a sense of wonderment yet also well-acquainted with cynical and disheartening views about how the world works and the agonizing paradoxes of death and living. His grandparents are probably the saddest people I have ever encountered in fiction. Oskar's detailed accounts remind me of Captain Ahab's in Moby Dick where nothing is held back. This also means that Foer's writing has a tendency to drone, often at the consequence of the story's natural flow itself. Much like Moby Dick, this expansive writing style that is borderline anal retentive is an acquired taste and so I don't recommend this book for easy and casual reading. I admit that even I was getting irritated if not entirely bored in some passages.
Despite that, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was a fulfilling and daring chronicle about grief and loss, death and metamorphosis, told in the conflicting yet enriched perspectives between a child who lost a parent and an old married couple who lost their son.
The 9-11 inspiration was done just right without giving itself to some condescending melodrama, and Foer was actually able to create a vivid landscape of feelings whenever he can say a lot more with the most economical words as long as they can deeply speak to the heart. The trouble with the writing which I remain critical of simply lies in its indulgent tendency to become garrulous, filling the pages with too much information that interrupts the flow of an otherwise consuming and unique narrative.
In a nutshell, I really liked this book for its effort to convey how a young mind tries to process having a loved one die in an event of national importance, and how that can potentially mess him up. I really thought Foer had the ability to distill the essence of such pain and wanton longing, particularly when I read the passages shared by the grandparents because those parts of the book really made me feel as if contents of my own soul are laid bare before me, and I fear what is being reflected back in its muddled surface. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an elegant tale that for me struggles and somewhat succeeds in offering half of the answer for The Beatles' song about where all the lonely people come from, and the wondrous, possible places that they travel to once they decided there is no reason to stay stuck in a place that only makes them feel less whole.
Author Jonathan Safran Foer attempts to capture the overwhelming mystery of what loss (as well as guilt) can do to us, as well as the shocking simplicity of the things between them. In his 9-11 tragedy-inspired novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer shaped a fascinating story told in the eyes of a nine-year-old Jewish boy named Oskar Schell who is coping with the death of his father, Thomas, after the terrorist attacks. Smart, inquisitive but still very young and so naive of the ways of adults, Oskar embarks on a journey to preserve the memory of his father by reading too much into clues and making up theories along the way concerning the last few things his father had done before he was killed during 9-11.
He retraces the steps of his father's habits, and explores the places he had been weeks before until he became obsessed with visiting every person in the six boroughs of his neighborhood with the surname 'Black', believing he or she may be the last person his father talked to before he went to work and died. His most prized object was the key his father left behind, wishing it will lead to some secret or revelation, regardless of whatever it is. Oskar is not the only POV narrator of this novel, however. Between his journal entries faithfully cataloging every minuscule detail of his adventures are the letters shared by his paternal grandparents. The grandmother writes to Oskar, retelling the story of how she met and fell in love with her husband who left before Oskar's father was even born. The grandfather, Thomas Sr., on the other hand, writes to his late son whom he had never met, but now he was willing to connect with his estranged wife in the wake of their son's unexpected demise in 9-11. Their respective entries serve as breaks from Oskar's own, but they have to be the saddest pieces of writing I have ever read from two people who struggle to make a life together but couldn't figure out why it was worth having one together in the first place.
The climactic meeting between Thomas Sr. and Oskar at the very last hundred pages or so of the book was a quiet moment filled with both meaningful and pointless conversation. It was also when Oskar finally confesses as to why he couldn't stop missing his father, and why he had been trying to solve a mystery he may have pinned all his hopes to, mostly because it was the only thing left of his father he can hold onto.
What he had always wanted in the end was forgiveness. As perceptive and brave as Oskar was during the coping process, he remains a child of nine years; selfish, narrow-minded, innocent and optimistic. He's far too young to face such a harrowing existential crisis, but that inner conflict is what drives the spectacular quality of this novel.
I think Foer's narrative style and stylistic language overall have an impressive breadth; the descriptions are so uninhibited and very detailed, yet also quirky and sporadic that the incoherent ramblings of each of its three major narrators can be very poetic and poignant, if not altogether exhausting to peruse. I can liken Oskar to Christopher John Francis Boone from Mark Haddon's A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime because I think Oskar may also have a developmental disorder and may even be in the autism spectrum. He sure is a strange child with a sense of wonderment yet also well-acquainted with cynical and disheartening views about how the world works and the agonizing paradoxes of death and living. His grandparents are probably the saddest people I have ever encountered in fiction. Oskar's detailed accounts remind me of Captain Ahab's in Moby Dick where nothing is held back. This also means that Foer's writing has a tendency to drone, often at the consequence of the story's natural flow itself. Much like Moby Dick, this expansive writing style that is borderline anal retentive is an acquired taste and so I don't recommend this book for easy and casual reading. I admit that even I was getting irritated if not entirely bored in some passages.
Despite that, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was a fulfilling and daring chronicle about grief and loss, death and metamorphosis, told in the conflicting yet enriched perspectives between a child who lost a parent and an old married couple who lost their son.
The 9-11 inspiration was done just right without giving itself to some condescending melodrama, and Foer was actually able to create a vivid landscape of feelings whenever he can say a lot more with the most economical words as long as they can deeply speak to the heart. The trouble with the writing which I remain critical of simply lies in its indulgent tendency to become garrulous, filling the pages with too much information that interrupts the flow of an otherwise consuming and unique narrative.
In a nutshell, I really liked this book for its effort to convey how a young mind tries to process having a loved one die in an event of national importance, and how that can potentially mess him up. I really thought Foer had the ability to distill the essence of such pain and wanton longing, particularly when I read the passages shared by the grandparents because those parts of the book really made me feel as if contents of my own soul are laid bare before me, and I fear what is being reflected back in its muddled surface. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an elegant tale that for me struggles and somewhat succeeds in offering half of the answer for The Beatles' song about where all the lonely people come from, and the wondrous, possible places that they travel to once they decided there is no reason to stay stuck in a place that only makes them feel less whole.
Lost by Gregory Maguire
May 2016
Let me start this review by saying that I've read and reviewed Gregory Maguire's most famous and critically-acclaimed work entitled Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which was turned into a Broadway musical hit--and I didn't end up being as impressed about it as I hoped I would be. With that said, I already have extremely low expectations going into this book. It's also noteworthy to point out tha I've read some reviews about it in Goodreads, and they seemed to generally criticize the convoluted plot and subplots, as well as the lack of any clear pay-off in the end. Author Maguire himself has been known to write novels about well-known fictional characters created by other, much like with Wicked whose central figure if the supposed villain of the original Wizard of Oz books. Lost is the very first time, I believe, that he wrote about an original character. There is a lot about this novel that was entertaining. I honestly enjoyed it.
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The question, however, is if it remained as engaging as it was in its first 200 pages or so, and the short answer is that IT DIDN'T. I think I'm going to have to agree on the majority of the review in GR then by saying so, but I would also still like to commend its merits for anyone who is interested in picking this up. Lost is a confounding piece of fiction, to start off. The narrative itself is a fractured examination of the lead character's psyche who is a novelist working on her own tale. Winifred Rudge is a storyteller, even when she's not sitting down with a pen and paper, or typing in a computer. She creates conversations in her head where fictional people would exchange dialogue as they pursue a plot that they want to unravel. The novel is filled with passages of Winifred writing this story of hers in her head, all the while having a crisis and struggle of her own outside of her imagination.
I find Winnie's 'drafts' of her novel inserted between the passages of the actual real-time story to be amusing. She was essentially writing a story about a woman named Wendy who is fixated on finding out who the real Jack the Ripper is. It's an investigative mystery novel then, which is more or less inspired by the weird series of events Winifred herself got caught up in. The premise of Lost is simple enough: an aspiring novelist writes a historical crime fiction while also undergoing a stressful amount of unusual incidents in her life outside her writing. Winifred struck me as the kind of woman so detached with her own person that she's been using her ability to tell stories to cope from daily grievances. Until she was confronted by seemingly supernatural forces that more or less haunt the apartment complex she shared with a distant cousin, Winnie was possibly more content with dwelling on her her inner life than forming any other kind of meaningful relationships outside her cousin John.
I find Winnie's 'drafts' of her novel inserted between the passages of the actual real-time story to be amusing. She was essentially writing a story about a woman named Wendy who is fixated on finding out who the real Jack the Ripper is. It's an investigative mystery novel then, which is more or less inspired by the weird series of events Winifred herself got caught up in. The premise of Lost is simple enough: an aspiring novelist writes a historical crime fiction while also undergoing a stressful amount of unusual incidents in her life outside her writing. Winifred struck me as the kind of woman so detached with her own person that she's been using her ability to tell stories to cope from daily grievances. Until she was confronted by seemingly supernatural forces that more or less haunt the apartment complex she shared with a distant cousin, Winnie was possibly more content with dwelling on her her inner life than forming any other kind of meaningful relationships outside her cousin John.
" ...because what really is the job of the dead? It's not to hang around, but to disappear--to clear the air for the living. Once the living had discharged their duties to their dead relatives and companions, they could go back to living a full life. The goal of a ghost is to dismiss it and leave the living to have a full life without guilt or undue grief. "
It's truly the Maguire's execution of the novel that set it apart from most linearly structured narratives. There is so much meta material in this novel that could baffle and excite readers from the get-go. I was really enthralled with Winnie's voice both as a character, and as a writer writing another fictional character's thoughts. Maguire applies enough humorous tones in a lot of the earlier scenes of this book that kept me chuckling. I was engrossed with the escalation of events which started off funny then creepy and then disarmingly disturbing. To describe Lost as a horror story with supernatural elements would not be sufficient since I don't think the novel's purpose was to incite fear and suspense. If it was, then Maguire certainly should have done better because any sense of danger and urgency was not sustained throughout the rest of the book.
In fact, the plot started meandering. The things that amused me and got me curious about it suddenly became the very things that annoyed me by it. It almost felt as if the more I learned about the mysteries surrounding the place of haunting, the less I became determined to solve the riddles which cluttered the exposition. Winifred also started getting under my nerves. I found her clever and funny in a lot of ways at first, but after a while--when she still insisted on being so closed off and reticent even to readers--her actions and private thoughts stopped being an immediate concern of mine. I started to feel just as detached as she was about her own life. She just started making less sense as the book went on. The concept that one of Winifred's ancestors was actually Charles Dickens' inspiration for the character of Scrooge from A Christmas Carol was intriguing. The idea that Winifred created an obvious self-insert in her character Wendy who is searching for Jack the Ripper is just as compelling. However, Maguire was simply unable to weave these two concepts together in a way that's cohesive and interesting. After two hundred pages or so, my attention for the story started to dwindle until I could barely keep up with whatever stunning revelations were unfolding--and I don't even think there were.
Lost was just one of those books that seem to be a worthwhile reading at first until it proved to be a disappointment. It's always sad when you find a book you could hardly put down when you began reading it a hundred pages in, and then as you progress your first impression about it changes for the worst, until you'd find yourself wanting to put it down instead. That's how I would summarize my experience for this book. I could still recommend it, but it's probably the least Gregory Maguire book that one could immerse oneself in.
In fact, the plot started meandering. The things that amused me and got me curious about it suddenly became the very things that annoyed me by it. It almost felt as if the more I learned about the mysteries surrounding the place of haunting, the less I became determined to solve the riddles which cluttered the exposition. Winifred also started getting under my nerves. I found her clever and funny in a lot of ways at first, but after a while--when she still insisted on being so closed off and reticent even to readers--her actions and private thoughts stopped being an immediate concern of mine. I started to feel just as detached as she was about her own life. She just started making less sense as the book went on. The concept that one of Winifred's ancestors was actually Charles Dickens' inspiration for the character of Scrooge from A Christmas Carol was intriguing. The idea that Winifred created an obvious self-insert in her character Wendy who is searching for Jack the Ripper is just as compelling. However, Maguire was simply unable to weave these two concepts together in a way that's cohesive and interesting. After two hundred pages or so, my attention for the story started to dwindle until I could barely keep up with whatever stunning revelations were unfolding--and I don't even think there were.
Lost was just one of those books that seem to be a worthwhile reading at first until it proved to be a disappointment. It's always sad when you find a book you could hardly put down when you began reading it a hundred pages in, and then as you progress your first impression about it changes for the worst, until you'd find yourself wanting to put it down instead. That's how I would summarize my experience for this book. I could still recommend it, but it's probably the least Gregory Maguire book that one could immerse oneself in.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
October 2016
This is honestly a very daunting novel to review, more so to finish reading in the first place, and not just because of its 600+ pages but the quality of its prose which is painstakingly detailed in ways that are often not necessary at all. I can only think of two reasons why I could recommend reading this, and even then I could only recommend it to a specific type of people, and not to your average casual reader. Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a 2000 book that is in many ways a historical fiction about the Golden and Silver Age of American comic books. This subject matter is what got me so interested in it when a good friend of mine recommended it (and purchased me a copy as a Christmas gift last year). |
~MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD~
The paperback is actually close to seven hundred pages and is divided into six parts which chronicled the lives and struggles of cousins Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, the titular heroes of this novel. They are aspiring comic book writers and artists with a Jewish heritage, living in an era when fascism is thriving and victimizing Europe. With this promising premise filled with daring possibilities for character exposition with lots of historical allusion, Chabon takes readers into a very vivid and verbose journey about the intricacies that surrounded these cousins and their choices. From making it big in the comic book industry and facing certain issues in the business, to the important discoveries they have made within their personal, private lives that also influenced and changed them either for better or worse.
The paperback is actually close to seven hundred pages and is divided into six parts which chronicled the lives and struggles of cousins Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, the titular heroes of this novel. They are aspiring comic book writers and artists with a Jewish heritage, living in an era when fascism is thriving and victimizing Europe. With this promising premise filled with daring possibilities for character exposition with lots of historical allusion, Chabon takes readers into a very vivid and verbose journey about the intricacies that surrounded these cousins and their choices. From making it big in the comic book industry and facing certain issues in the business, to the important discoveries they have made within their personal, private lives that also influenced and changed them either for better or worse.
"Comic books thrived to articulate a purpose for itself in the marketplace of ten-cent dreams, to express the lust for power and the gaudy taste of a race of powerless people with no leave to dress themselves. They were pure and true, and they arrived at precisely the moment when the kids of America began, after ten years of terrible hardship, to find their pockets burdened with the occasional superfluous dime."
What I can say foremost is that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a damn mighty fine novel comparable in length and breadth to perhaps something like War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy but the comparison, of course, ends there. I just want to give everyone proper context on how completely immersed, absorbing and detailed this novel was to read and enjoy, and how much it spans from one decade/era to the next since it does follow Joe and Sam from their early twenties to middle age and so on. Since it's also a historical fiction, many chapters are dedicated to lavishing the readers with expositions regarding the comic book characters created by Joe and Sam, and how they serve as allegories for the themes Chabon tackled profusely and passionately for. There is clearly a great amount of research and planning done to infuse together what is based from factual accounts with that of the fictionalized moments in Chabon's narrative he wrote in, but ultimately the result was a seamless and compelling semi-biographical examination and commentary at why Americans created and celebrated superheroes in those times.
Chabon's grasp of his subject matter is impressive; he doesn't shy away from dedicated chapters to completely build a world that resembles the one we can recognize about the Golden Age of comics, while also maintaining layers of fictional liberties in doing so.
Of course, this rigorous storytelling style will not appeal to everyone's taste and sensibilities, and that is why I can't recommend The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay with the casual reader. One should at least have an enthusiasm or passion in comic books in general which I have copious amounts of. If not, then a great bulk of this novel will be alienating and baffling for you. However, if you do have an open mind and do want to explore the mythos and the kind of creative industry which comics books operate on, then The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay could be a worthwhile endeavor. The selling point of the story for me is the way Chabon got me invested and involved in Joe and Sam as characters and respective representations of a Jewish boy who immigrated to the States and wanted to help his kin escape from the Nazis in whatever way he can, and a closeted gay man who is coming to terms with his sexuality. The moments devoted to their respective character arcs are my favorite.
Chabon's grasp of his subject matter is impressive; he doesn't shy away from dedicated chapters to completely build a world that resembles the one we can recognize about the Golden Age of comics, while also maintaining layers of fictional liberties in doing so.
Of course, this rigorous storytelling style will not appeal to everyone's taste and sensibilities, and that is why I can't recommend The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay with the casual reader. One should at least have an enthusiasm or passion in comic books in general which I have copious amounts of. If not, then a great bulk of this novel will be alienating and baffling for you. However, if you do have an open mind and do want to explore the mythos and the kind of creative industry which comics books operate on, then The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay could be a worthwhile endeavor. The selling point of the story for me is the way Chabon got me invested and involved in Joe and Sam as characters and respective representations of a Jewish boy who immigrated to the States and wanted to help his kin escape from the Nazis in whatever way he can, and a closeted gay man who is coming to terms with his sexuality. The moments devoted to their respective character arcs are my favorite.
"He wanted them to understand the importance of the fight, to succumb to the propaganda that he and Sammy were unabashedly churning out. If they could not move Americans to anger against Hitler, then Joe's existence, the mysterious freedom that had been granted to him and denied to so many others, had no meaning."
Joe Kavalier's character arc in the beginning focuses on his superhero myth-making as an artist with a character named The Escapist, his creation with Sam. Though Sam is the one who is more of the writer of their duo, Kavalier is the one whose attachment with the Escapist runs deep since it stems from a place of both hope and despair. Successfully immigrating to the States before Nazis took over his land, Joe feels obligated to do something to make Americans and everyone else see the evils of Hitler's regime, and this translates in the stories and illustrations he collaborates with Sam who is open to it because he is very supportive of his cousin's plight. Joe wants to showcase that the Escapist is a superhero who can free himself from any bondage and hence also do the same for others. The origin story for the Escapist is nuanced, and the more Joe devotes all his creativity and efforts in turning him into a symbol akin that to a freedom fighter, the more he also gets depressed over the fact that he's living a pretty good life, earning sustainable income for his comics while his family is out there dealing with the Nazis daily.
This survivor's guilt drives Joe's character throughout the novel, making him do really noble and admirable acts but reckless and temperamental things as well. Joe is a well-rounded character whose personal demons are fascinating to read about.
Meanwhile, Sam Clay struggling with his sexuality and abandonment issues offered readers a bittersweet taste of wide-eyed innocence and idealism. Sam has admired men his entire life, and it was only through meeting an actor named Tracy Bacon, who plays the Escapist for a radio show based on their comics, did Sam came to understand that he falls for men romantically. But the era in which he lives in is very homophobic and prejudiced, and Sam has to retreat emotionally from what he wants and the man he loves because to be a gay man then means opening yourself up to being terrorized, policed and even raped. The later parts of the novel reach a frightening climax when Sam was abused by a couple of FBI agents just because he was gay, and Joe finding out that his younger brother whom he was attempting to spirit away from a Nazi-populated region had perished on a ship ride to America among with other Jewish children. It got very harrowing that I was shocked about it because the tone of the novel becomes more intimate in a gruesome and disheartening way. Nevertheless, I was already devoted to these boys so I finished anyway.
This survivor's guilt drives Joe's character throughout the novel, making him do really noble and admirable acts but reckless and temperamental things as well. Joe is a well-rounded character whose personal demons are fascinating to read about.
Meanwhile, Sam Clay struggling with his sexuality and abandonment issues offered readers a bittersweet taste of wide-eyed innocence and idealism. Sam has admired men his entire life, and it was only through meeting an actor named Tracy Bacon, who plays the Escapist for a radio show based on their comics, did Sam came to understand that he falls for men romantically. But the era in which he lives in is very homophobic and prejudiced, and Sam has to retreat emotionally from what he wants and the man he loves because to be a gay man then means opening yourself up to being terrorized, policed and even raped. The later parts of the novel reach a frightening climax when Sam was abused by a couple of FBI agents just because he was gay, and Joe finding out that his younger brother whom he was attempting to spirit away from a Nazi-populated region had perished on a ship ride to America among with other Jewish children. It got very harrowing that I was shocked about it because the tone of the novel becomes more intimate in a gruesome and disheartening way. Nevertheless, I was already devoted to these boys so I finished anyway.
"The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam; a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, a paper consumed by fire can bloom from a pile of ash. But it's all an illusion. The true magic of this broken world, however lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become thoroughly lost that they might never have existed in the first place."
At the last hundred pages or so of the book, Chabon included production notes that expand on the world he created for Kavalier and Clay. I have yet to read them all but from what I can garner so far, they are able to offer more insights on his narrative and choices of plot directions.