read-along – Ripple Effects

Middlemarch: You be the Screenwriter

It’s a wrap. Here’s my finale for our Middlemarch in May Read-Along.

You may be a print purist, don’t want to see a movie made. Just take this as an imaginary writing exercise then:

You’re offered the job of writing a screenplay, the tall order of turning Eliot’s 800-page novel into a movie. The task at hand is to choose from the numerous storylines and just focus on a few that your feature will cover.

The following are some of the main storylines and thematic matters in Eliot’s Middlemarch. This list is just off the top of my head, feel free to add in. Which ones would you select and elaborate?

Sisterhood between Dorothea and Celia

Dorothea’s marriage to Casaubon

Celia and Sir James Chettam

Mr. Brooke’s political involvement

Politics, power and influence in Middlemarch

The mysterious cousin of Casaubon: Will Ladislaw’s backstory

Relationship between Casaubon and Ladislaw

Newcomer Lydgate: the young, aspiring doctor

Old vs. New: The introduction of new ideas and methods and their reception or rejection in Middlemarch

Lydgate’s character: idealism vs. practice

The Vincy family: Mr & Mrs., Fred and Rosamund

The Caleb Garth family: Mr. & Mrs., Mary Garth

Fred Vincy and Mary Garth

Fred’s lifestyle, his love and dreams, and his change

Rosamund’s lifestyle, her love and dreams, and her change (or, has she?)

Featherstone: The subjective construction of will and estate

Mary Garth’s moral dilemma in dealing with Featherstone’s order regarding his will

Farebrother and family: Farebrother’s role in joining Fred and Mary despite his secret love for her.

Raffles the disruptor of Bulstrode’s life: the wages of sins, or, the consequences of actions that last beyond the statute of limitations

Ladislaw’s true identity and Bulstrode’s dark history

Raffles’ falling ill and Bulstrode taking him in for fear of reverberation, hence leading to the suspected ‘wrongful death’ incident and the presumed guilty of bribery between Bulstrode and Lydgate.

Will Ladislaw being victim of class discrimination and racial prejudice in the provincial town of Middlemarch

Family finance, debts and gambling endangering a fragile marriage between Fred and Rosamund

How to choose a mate, keys to a happy marriage

Difference between romance and love, looking at three pairs of relationships: Lydgate and Rosamund, Fred and Mary, Dorothea and Will

And for that matter, how about intellectualism vs. passion, the marriage of Dorothea and Casaubon

Choices of actions of the characters based on values (or lack of), principles, and plain gut

Poverty, welfare, and social actions, responsibilities of the rich

Male/Female relationships in marriage and society, and how Dorothea both fulfills prescribed duties and overrides expectations.

Finally, probably the most important element in a movie, the emotional impact it elicits in your viewers: Which of the above storylines will you focus on to bring out such effects?

We all love the Finale of the book. But why does Eliot spend so few pages in describing the love relations between Dorothea and Will? They are seldom seen together, and in the rare occasions that we do see them, they’re caught in awkward and embarrassing situations. Would you give them more screen time together in a positive light?

I think one reason Eliot doesn’t elaborate on their courtship could be because she doesn’t want to mislead her readers that this is a ‘romance novel’. Rather, she brings out a kind of sublime love between the two, particularly on the part of Dorothea, a noble love that motivates her to give up her wealth, position and the familiarity of Middlemarch. These in Dorothea’s views are but shackles restraining her to do what she wants and to love freely.

Finally, any casting suggestions?

A huge thank-you to all participants and spectators for your input, comments and posts. It’s been a pleasurable ride, even though the length and numerous storylines and characters may have bogged us down occasionally. I appreciate the pebbles thrown into the Pond to make all those ripples.

Enjoy your summer!

Middlemarch Book I: What are siblings for?

Dorothea and Celia Brooke remind me of the Dashwood sisters Elinor and MariAnne. Like MaryAnne, Celia, being the younger, holds much respect and love for her older sister. Unlike the sisters in Austen’s novel however, here in Middlemarch so far, I just wonder who is Sense and who is Sensibility.

What are siblings for if not to act as a sounding board to test one’s opinion? This is a scene fit for a prime time TV comedy. Celia, just learned that Mr. Casaubon is the only guest coming to dinner––the setup to that special dinner she is totally oblivious––thus allowing her to speak her mind freely to Dorothea:

_______

“I hope there is some one else. Then I shall not hear him eat his soup so.”
“What is there remarkable about his soup-eating?”
“Really, Dodo, can’t you hear how he scrapes his spoon? And he always blinks before he speaks. I don’t know whether Locke blinked, but I’m sure I am sorry for those who sat opposite to him if he did.”
“Celia,” said Dorothea, with emphatic gravity, “pray don’t make any more observations of that kind.”
“Why not? They are quite true,” returned Celia, who had her reasons for persevering, though she was beginning to be a little afraid.
“Many things are true which only the commonest minds observe.”
“Then I think the commonest minds must be rather useful. I think it is a pity Mr. Casaubon’s mother had not a commoner mind: she might have taught him better.” Celia was inwardly frightened, and ready to run away, now she had hurled this light javelin.

_______

What follows of course is the bombshell that shatters the sounding board for any sense or sensibility.

Sibling Waxwings — I’ll just throw in this pair of Waxwings, they look like they’re siblings.

Another pair of siblings that makes a lively scene is Fred Vincy and his sister Rosamund. Talking about using the word “superior” to denote certain young men, Fred says:

_______

“Oh, there are so many superior teas and sugars now. Superior is getting to be shopkeepers’ slang.”
“Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?” said Rosamond, with mild gravity.
“Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.”
“There is correct English: that is not slang.”
“I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.”
“You will say anything, Fred, to gain your point.”
“Well, tell me whether it is slang or poetry to call an ox a leg-plaiter.”
“Of course you can call it poetry if you like.”
“Aha, Miss Rosy, you don’t know Homer from slang. I shall invent a new game; I shall write bits of slang and poetry on slips, and give them to you to separate.”
“Dear me, how amusing it is to hear young people talk!” said Mrs. Vincy, with cheerful admiration.

_______

What are siblings for if not to act as target of javelin or indulgence for a doting mother.

How’s your reading coming along?

________

Some Middlemarch posts from our Read-Along participants:

Dolce Bellezza

Gladsome Lights

Middlemarch in May: Let the Fun Begin!

A few quotes to set the stage for our Read-Along of Middlemarch by George Eliot.

BBC History Website:

“She used a male pen name to ensure her works were taken seriously in an era when female authors were usually associated with romantic novels.”

From “George Eliot: A Celebration” by A. S. Byatt, as introduction to Modern Library’s edition of Middlemarch:

“She had no real heir as “novelist of ideas” in England… Her heirs are abroad—Proust in France, Mann in Germany. Which brings me to another reason for loving her: she was European, not little-English, her roots were Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, not just, as Leavis’s “Great Tradition” implies, Jane Austen. She opened gates which are still open.”

From “Why Read George Eliot”, by Paula Marantz Cohen in American Scholar, Spring 2006:

“Eliot’s voice, in its assumption of a wiser, juster, more all-encompassing perspective, is the ligament of her novels. It elevates them from ingenious storytelling to divine comedy…

As Virginia Woolf observed, Eliot wrote novels for grown-up people. Our society and our relationships would be saner and better if more grownups read her.”

Last but not least, let’s kick off Middlemarch in May with Henry James’s lively reflections on George Eliot, as quoted in Colm Tóibín’s article “Creating The Portrait of a Lady” in The New York Review of Books, July 19, 2007 Issue:

“A specter haunted Henry James: it was the specter of George Eliot. He visited her first in 1869, when he was twenty-six, and wrote to his father:

‘I was immensely impressed, interested and pleased. To begin with, she is magnificently ugly—deliciously hideous…. Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end up as I ended, in falling in love with her. Yes behold me literally in love with this great horse-faced blue-stocking.’

Three years later, when Middlemarch appeared, James wrote from Rome to his friend Grace Norton:

A marvellous mind throbs in every page of Middlemarch. It raises the standard of what is to be expected of women—(by your leave!) We know all about the female heart; but apparently there is a female brain, too…. To produce some little exemplary works of art is my narrow and lowly dream. They are to have less “brain” than Middlemarch; but (I boldly proclaim it) they are to have more form.”

Let the fun begin!

____________________

Other posts from Read-Along participants:

Middlemarch Has Me Laughing So Soon by Gretchen at Gladsome Lights

My invite post:

Middlemarch in May Read-Along

My Middlemarch Review Posts:

Middlemarch Book I: What are siblings for?

Middlemarch Book II to IV: Inkblot Test

Middlemarch Wrap: You be the screenwriter

‘Middlemarch in May’ Read-Along

In 2015, BBC Culture contributor Jane Ciabattari surveyed 82 book critics around the world outside UK, “from Australia to Zimbabwe”, and asked them to rate the greatest English novels of all time. Guess which book came up on top of the list? Guess right. Middlemarch by George Eliot. Why outside the UK? To find out “What does the rest of the world see as the greatest British novels… for a collective critical assessment… a global perspective”.

For her 19th C. classic to appeal to critics today, George Eliot must have done something right. I must discover the mystery. Interesting that I’d read Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch a few years ago and enjoyed it even without reading the eponymous work. But I’ve been saying to myself, I need to put an end to this cultural deprivation. You’ll never know, there just might be a new movie adaptation brewing somewhere with a postmodern streak. I have to read the original first.

My personal plan is to read the hard copy and listen to the audiobook narrated by Juliet Stevenson whichever and whenever I like during the process. Read at home, listen while driving or doing something else. That usually works best for me. Feel free to use whatever reading format you prefer.

Middlemarch Middlemarch Audiobook

As the lovely month of May is approaching, you’re welcome to join me and Bellezza and others here and here to read Middlemarch. We will take it leisurely. While we start in May, I’ll leave the ending date tentatively at the end of June. But if by ‘leisurely’ it means July or even further, I’m totally fine with it. (Bellezza would know how flexible I am with our previous read-along) I always find reading with a deadline more a pressure than pleasure.

You might have read it before, so here’s a chance to dust off your copy from the shelf, as we read or reread together and connect online, no matter where you are, from Australia to Zimbabwe. You may like to share via a blog post, leave a comment, or send a tweet. How’s this for a hashtag: #MiddlemarchinMay on Twitter.

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Another Proust Read-Along

… as if we’re not busy enough?

Truth is, reading Proust calms me down. Maybe because I’ve to slow down, really slow down, to savor, and decipher. These two have become a fused enjoyment for me while reading Vol. 1 of In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way.

After finishing that, I quickly ordered the next volume Within a Budding Grove, but have since put it aside… until now, thanks to Bellezza of Dolce Bellezza, who read Vol. I with me. She’s right, of course, as she wrote on her invitation post for Vol. II:

‘No one should read Proust alone.”

So here we are, embarking on another Proust Read-Along, In Search of Lost Time Vol. II, Within A Budding Grove.

Yes, this is a slow read, as always on Ripple Effects. We plan to finish and post our thoughts on November 30. I just might add in a mid-way post around end of October.

You are invited to join us for another slow and enjoyable ride.

If quantifying makes it easier to grasp, counting the days in October and November, and the 730 pages in my Modern Library Classic edition, you only need to read about 12 pages every day. A very doable plan.

Those of you who have read it all… how about a re-read now?

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First Post for Vol. II:

Half Way Through A Budding Grove

My posts on Vol. I, Swann’s Way:

Part 1: Combray (my ‘Freshly Pressed’ post)

Wrap-up: The Swann and Gatsby Foil

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Proust Read-Along: The Swann and Gatsby Foil

“He knew perfectly well as a general truth that human life is full of contrasts…” Swann’s Way, P. 510

While plowing through Part 2, ‘Swann In Love’, I happened to reread The Great Gatsby. Thanks to Baz Luhrmann’s new movie adaptation, I’m sure many more are doing the same. And oh what interesting contrasts Swann and Gatsby make.

Both are deeply in love, yearning for a woman who seems to be utterly elusive. Gatsby frantically maximizes to attract Daisy; Swann willingly minimizes to reach Odette. From a poor background, Gatsby grabs whatever means he can to build his wealth; Swann whose niche belongs to high society, has to pretend that he is nobody special, stooping to ‘a lower social sphere’ (P. 285) to be near Odette.

That distance is more than social. Swann is willing to forsake his cultured tastes of art and music, to lay aside even his own research and writing on Vermeer (Odette: I’ve never heard of him, is he alive still? P. 279). Swann is willing to lay down his interests and privileges for a woman who is uncouth in the sophistication of high society, who has superficial views and flashy tastes, and alas, even promiscuous.

However, love transforms all deficiencies and blemishes into ethereal beauty. Here’s how Swann visualizes Odette. To him, she is like Sipporah, Jethro’s daughter, Botticelli’s fresco in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel:

Following Odette to her ‘little nucleus’ at the Verdurins, Swann downplays his association with prominent people and tries not to be so outspoken with his knowledge and opinion about art and music.

When he is alone with Odette, he has taken her values and interests:

he tried at least to ensure that she should be happy in his company, tried not to counteract those vulgar ideas, that bad taste which she displayed on every possible occasion, and which in fact he loved, as he could not help loving everything that came from her, which enchanted him even. (P. 348)

Is this measurement of incompatibility in tastes inherently snobbish? Yes, Swann (or Proust) is sensitive enough to analyze this in depth. What is ‘taste’ anyway, or the intellectual beliefs with which he has been raised from the days of his youth?

… the objects we admire have no absolute value in themselves, that the whole thing is a matter of period and class, is no more than a series of fashions, the most vulgar of which are worth just as much as those which are regarded as the most refined. (P. 350)

So, all for love of Odette, Swann is willing to give up going to the Jockey Club, lunching with the Prince of Wales, or his love of Holland, or a visit to the Versailles (‘which bored her to tears’):

And so he denied himself the pleasure of visiting those places, delighted to tell himself that it was for her sake, that he wished only to feel, to enjoy things with her. (p. 350)

Those colorful shirts Gatsby has hoarded, Odette would have loved them, just like Daisy, and his mansion too… if only Swann had resided in a more prestigious address, somewhere ‘more worthy of him’ instead of his house on the Quai d’Orleans. (P. 346)

Odette’s fondness of Swann begins to wane as Forcheville enters into the picture. She becomes even harder to get. Swann is burned with jealousy, anger and bitterness. Yet he cannot forget her. His love even grows stronger for her, despite receiving an anonymous letter defaming her. Why,

People often say that, by point out to a man the faults of his mistress, you succeed only in strengthening his attachment to her… he had begun to desire the possession — as if that were ever possible — of another person. (P. 517)

Perhaps that is a mark of love: the demand for exclusivity. This is exactly what Gatsby wants Daisy to admit, that she has never loved Tom, that she has always loved him. “Oh, you want too much,” she cried to Gatsby.

But Swann is more fortunate. He knows he must gain back Odette’s full and exclusive devotion and somehow he does. I’m glad to read in Part 3 that eventually Odette does become Mme Swann. I’d be curious to know how that comes about. (Proust’s strategy to get us go on reading the next volumes?)

Part 3 is an enjoyable and much swifter read as the narrator remembers his childhood in Paris drown in unrequited love (so far, not sure about how this unfolds later) for Swann and Odette’s daughter Gilberte. Because of his love for Gilberte, the boy is infatuated with M and Mme Swann as well. His crush on the elusive Gilberte parallels Swann’s love for Odette in their earlier days.

The last sentence in Volume 1 of In Search of Lost Time, like that in The Great Gatsby, ends with a haunting remark on memory and the past:

The places we have known… were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

There are much more to be said, but nothing can replace the actual experience of reading Proust first hand. From March to May as I plowed through Swann’s Way, there had been up’s and down’s. Numerous times long sentences entangled, yet the very next moment could be so beautiful and lucid it dissipated all frustrations. I now look forward to Volume II.

Thanks for joining me in this Read-Along. Finish or not, you’re welcome to share your thoughts. Throw your two pebbles into the pond and make some ripples. If you have written a post, do let me know so I can link it here.

Bellezza of Dolce Bellezza

CLICK HERE to my post on Part 1 of Swann’s Way: Combray

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Proust Read-Along: Swann’s Way Part One, Combray

Reading these first 264 pages of Proust conjures up some of my own memories…

I was sitting in a graduate class. A fellow student was doing a presentation on phenomenology. He brought into class a chocolate cake, cut it and gave each of us a piece. We were to describe this particular act of ‘Eating chocolate cake in class’.

What elicited only single words or phrases from us, Proust could have written pages. Why, from pages 60 to 64 the narrator details his experience of eating four morsels of the little cakes ‘petites madeleines’, the uplifting sensation, the taste, the action of dipping them into tea before eating, and the diminishing enjoyment after each mouthful. Above all, he relays how the very act of eating these madeleines has evoked long-buried childhood memories of Combray:

… in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the waterlilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea. (p. 64)

I don’t pretend to understand everything I read. Far from it. These first 264 pages of Proust’s seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time for me is a learning experience. I have to read through ambiguity, discard the expectations of clarity and congruity, accept incomprehension and press on. But an experience still, and surprisingly, an enjoyable one. An eye-opener too. Where have I read a sentence of 31 lines (p. 67-68) in such flowing prose, with such sensitivity and nuanced observations? And I must add, which I read at 1 a.m. I’m a quick study.

Sure, the unexamined life is not worth living. Proust must have plowed through his to the single second, and in depth too, as the madeleine-eating episode reveals. Insomnia sure has its benefits… arousing volumes of memories for the narrator.

From this first reading I’m surprised to find Proust’s subject matter comes from the mundane, from people and places in the village Combray where the narrator would go to stay for a period of time every year as a child. Even more a surprising delight is the loquacious way he describes the events, the people, the scenery, and the insights he can generate from the minutest observations.

A tiled roof is a tiled roof, okay, it looks more beautiful reflected on the river. But I was struck by how the narrator caught himself with speechless admiration, and ironically, articulating it with lucidity and humor:

The tiled roof cast upon the pond, translucent again in the sunlight, a dappled pink reflection which I had never observed before. And, seeing upon the water, and on the surface of the wall, a pallid smile responding to the smiling sky, I cried aloud in my enthusiasm, brandishing my furled umbrella: “Gosh, gosh, gosh, gosh!” But at the same time I felt that I was in duty bound not to content myself with these unilluminating words, but to endeavour to see more clearly into the sources of my rapture. (p. 219)

Indeed, humor is another surprising find for me. In several places I’ve put down on the margin of the page, LOL!

So, I’ve quickly learned to go past those passages and sentences that have lost me, but soon as I come to something I can comprehend, and do resonate, I’d stop and reread, savoring the beauty of that moment.

My favourite passages include the heartbreaking accounts of the child’s longing for his mother’s goodnight kiss, the description of the church St. Hilaire where he goes to Sunday mass, the pages depicting the river Vivonne and the hawthorn trees in Swann’s park, the child’s discussions with Swann on reading and books, and his frustration with writer’s block as he strives to write poetry as a youngster.

But there is one passage I must mention. That is about the child’s Mamma caring to talk with their house maid and cook Françoise, asking her little questions about her feelings for her own family:

Francoise answered, laughing: ‘Madame knows everything… [like] the X-rays that they brought here for Mme Octave, and which can see what’s in your heart’ — and she went off, overwhelmed that anyone should be caring about her, perhaps anxious that we should not see her in tears: Mamma was the first person who had given her the heart-warming feeling that her peasant existence, with its simple joys and sorrows, might be an object of interest, might be a source of grief or pleasure to someone other than herself (p. 73).

This, I think, is exactly what Proust has done.

Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary, the village life, the kitchen and the table, the interactions and socializing, family relations, walking the country paths, the irises and the hawthorns… Reading this first part reminds me of paintings by Pieter Bruegel, or Van Gogh… and, not far from eating chocolate cake.

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How’s your reading so far?

Janell of An Everyday Life

tuesday in silhouette

Wrap up post on Parts Two and Three: May 15.

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Let’s Spring to Proust

Here we are, almost spring. According to my 2013 Read-Along plan, it’s time for Proust: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1, Swann’s Way.

Before we start, check this out. An excellent intro of Proust from The Guardian:

“So, Proust. Have you made it past the first 50 pages?

I’m guessing that a healthy proportion of people who pick up the book don’t even get beyond page 51. Within a similar word count, Raymond Chandler could have got through two murders, six whiskies, half a dozen wisecracks. Raymond Carver could have described at least six suburban households descending into despair. And Hemingway had almost finished The Old Man and The Sea. Yet, in pure plot terms, pretty much all that happens in those first pages of Proust is that the young Marcel struggles to fall asleep.”

Right. But I do urge you to finish this very helpful Guardian article on Proust.

Those who are familiar with Read-Along’s on Ripple Effects know, we go slow. Ah… go slow on Proust? Well yes, that just means you can read Chandler and Hemingway while you’re watching young Marcel struggle to sleep.

Here’s our very simple plan. You can read whatever version you like, if you’re so inclined, the original French edition will even be better. We can compare notes and thoughts. I’ll stick with the Modern Library version in the photo above, just because of the enticing cover.

Here are the dates for the two posts:

Part One, Combray (264 pages): to post April 15

Part Two, Swann In Love (278 pages) & Part Three, Places Names, The Name (61 pages): to post May 15

Two months to finish In Search of Lost Time Vol 1: Swann’s Way. I’m sure with our mutual support, we can all go past page 51 and even reach the end.

Interested? Do let me know in a comment. I’ll be sure to add and link your blog in the following list. If you’re not a blogger, you’re welcome to join in as well. Just come by on the two posting dates and share your thoughts.

So far, here are the participants who have confirmed with me:

Bellezza of Dolce Bellezza

Janell of An Everyday Life

Gavin of Page247

Tuesday of Tuesday in Silhouette

Jessica of Bluestockings.com

Alison of Chino House

Hope to see you join in.

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Previous Read-Along on Ripple Effects

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

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Soliloquy of a Book Hoarder

To read, or not to read, that is not the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
or to take arms against a shelf of troubles,
and by reading end them.

Before January is completely gone, I must make a resolution for this year. With all the good fortune, yes, books I’ve hoarded over the years at outrageously low prices, like slings and arrows raining down from shelves, many more shooting out from boxes… I must conquer them.

No excuse, but… loots hauled back from the annual Crossroad Market book sale is the Trojan horse of latent guilt. Why, wouldn’t you have fallen into the trap too, 15 books for $30? All in mint condition, some look like they’ve never been opened.

Upon reading two bloggers, Grad and Terri B, resolving to do similar courageous acts, I must start doing something to end the onslaught. I thereby resolve that in 2013 I’ll read from my TBR piles ~~only~~ , ok, mostly. Actually, the Bonheoffer and the Proust read-alongs are within this strategic move.

Here are some of the slings and arrows of my good fortune. Any of these in your TBR piles too? Read-along?

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale

Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

A. S. Byatt: Possession

Kate Chopin: The Awakening

Kiran Desai: The Inheritance of Loss

Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Jonathan Frantzen: The Corrections, Freedom

Shilpi Somaya Gowda: Secret Daughter

Henry James: The Ambassadors

Nicole Krauss: The History of Love

Ian MacEwan: Enduring Love, Saturday, Amsterdam

Herman Melville: Moby Dick (Will be reading in August with TerriB)

Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall

Claire Messud: The Emperor’s Children

Toni Morrison: Love

Irène Némirovsky: Suite Française

Marilynne Robinson: Home, Housekeeping

Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things

Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress of Florence

John Steinbeck: East of Eden

Zadie Smith: White Teeth

Jane Urquhart: The Underpainter

Winifred Watson: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence

Non-fiction:

Julia Briggs: Virginia Woolf, An Inner Life

Joseph Campbell: The Hero With A Thousand Faces

Mary Karr: Lit

Marilynne Robinson: Absence of Mind

2013 Read-Along Begins: Bonhoeffer

Here we are already the third day into the new year. How fast time flies! To kick things off, here’s the first Read-Along. Allow me to just reiterate from my open invite on Dec. 12, 2012:

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

In the top ten of Barnes and Noble’s Best non-fiction books of 2010, and on New York Times Best-Seller list, this Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography intrigues me greatly. Author Metaxas’s title makes me want to know more about this legendary figure whose books I had read in my youth, but now think I don’t know him enough to fully appreciate his daring life, a man of faith and anti-Nazi in wartime Germany.

This slow reading plan gives you plenty of time so you can still pursue other books on your plate. I’ve roughly divided the biography in two parts, posting twice:

Chapters 1 – 18 (277 pages): to post on February 15

Chapters 19 – 31 (264 pages): to post on March 15

With Arti, it’s always a slow read. You still have time now to order your book if you haven’t got it. And for others, dust it off the shelf. We’re reading the first part, Chapters 1 – 18 in Jan/Feb and posting our thoughts on these chapters on Feb. 15

Some of you may not be bloggers, you’re most welcome to join in the reading. Come to any of our posts on Feb. 15 and share your thoughts with us in the comment section. As I always say, the pond is open for all to throw in a pebble or two, make some ripples.

As of today, those who are joining in this read-along are:

Shoreacres of The Task At Hand (and cousin 🙂 )

Shari Green

Alison of Chino House

And those who have shown interest and still deciding, hope they will hop on soon:

nikkipolani

Jeanie of The Marmelade Gypsy

Hedda of Hedda’s Place

Ellen of The Happy Wonderer (reading already, hope she’ll join in the discussion)

If you’d like to read along with us, or join in any time later, just let me know in a comment and leave a link so I can add you on the list.

Before Feb. 15, you can always tweet me @Arti_Ripples or anyone of us who speaks in 140 characters.

Happy Reading!

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COMING UP in March to May: Proust Read-Along

Read-Along 2013: Bonhoeffer and Proust

CLICK HERE to Bonhoeffer Read-Along Part 2 Wrap-Up: Ch. 19 – 31

CLICK HERE to Bonhoeffer Read-Along Part 1: Ch. 1 – 18

CLICK HERE for an updated post “2013 Read-Along Begins: Bonhoeffer”

Just because they’ve been on the shelf staring at me for too long. And I’d love some company when I tackle them.

My experience of Read-Alongs started serendipitously this year upon the suggestion of another blogger. Thus began the four months journey of Midnight’s Children. Finding the experience so rewarding, I later held another one, Anna Karenina, just in time to coincide with the film.

So anyone who has come along with me know I like to take things slow. If I can finish a long book, anyone can. So here we are, hope you will join me in the winter months of 2013:

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

In the top ten of Barnes and Noble’s Best non-fiction books of 2010, and on New York Times Best-Seller list, this Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography intrigues me greatly. Author Metaxas’s title makes me want to know more about this legendary figure whose books I had read in my youth, but now think I haven’t known him enough to fully appreciate his daring life, a man of faith and anti-Nazi in wartime Germany.

This slow reading plan allows you plenty of time to pursue your own reading and blogging. I’ve roughly divided it in two parts, posting twice:

Chapters 1 – 18 (277 pages): to post on February 15

Chapters 19 – 31 (264 pages): to post on March 15

And come Spring, I’d like to step into the world of Proust.

In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1, Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust

My curiosity of Proust has long been latent. The movie Little Miss Sunshine is the trigger. Remember Steve Carell’s character Frank, the Proust scholar in the movie? He just got out of the hospital recovering from a failed suicide attempt… uh… Yeah, that’s when I told myself, umm… one of these days I must read some Proust.

So here I am, again attracted first by the appealing book cover from my favorite publisher: Modern Library.

I understand Lydia Davis has a newer translation of Swann’s Way. You can chose whatever translation you prefer. It may be good to compare notes on the different versions too.

Again, we’ll post twice. According to the parts in the book:

Part One, Combray (264 pages): to post April 15

Part Two, Swann In Love (278 pages) & Part Three, Places Names, The Name (61 pages): to post May 15

So these are my Read-Along plans for 2013. Sure hope you can join me on either or both of them. Just leave me with a comment and a link to your blog below. If you’re not a blogger, you can read along too. As we post, you can stop by and share your thoughts in the comment section. As I like to say, stop by the pond and throw in a pebble or two, make some ripples.

On Ripple Effects, the Read-Along bandwagon is a slow ride, but just as convivial. Hope to see you hop on!

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Anna Karenina Read-Along Parts 5 – 8… And The Curtain Falls

Funny, writing a post on this last part to wrap up our Read-Along is much harder than I first thought. Where do I begin?

Here are just some thoughts.

Tolstoy the Psychoanalyst… and More

First, this is not just one story but several, and not just appreciating a 19th C. writer in distant Russia, but this is Tolstoy the master storyteller. I’m amazed at his craft. What a sharp observer of human nature, the incisive psychoanalyst decades before Freud, not only piercing into the minds of women and of men, but our canine pals as well. Tolstoy the dog whisperer. Why, the hunting scene in Part Six is a unique exploration into the cognitive dissonance of Levin’s four-legged hunting partner Laska. And Tolstoy has amusingly shown us why dogs are man’s best friend. They know their master’s shortcomings, yet still remain faithful.

Tolstoy the Late-Night Show Host

And then there’s the humor. I was surprised from the start that Tolstoy’s style is so light and sometimes even deadpan. The best quotes comes from the minor characters. Here’s one from Yashvin, Vronsky’s friend from the military, condensing the 800 plus pages in a nutshell:

‘A wife’s a worry, a non-wife’s even worse,’ thought Yashvin… (p. 544)

Tolstoy can make one superb late-night show host. Listen to this:

A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that nothing prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps… (p. 528)

That was what Vronsky feels with regard to society. And we know Vronsky gets more than just leg cramps.

Tolstoy the humorist? Or realist? Even the most casual remarks could bring me a smile of agreement. Like here, responding to Vronsky’s urge to go out for a walk, Oblonsky has aptly voiced out my sentiment:

‘If only it was possible to stay lying down and still go,’ Oblonsky answered, stretching. ‘It’s wonderful to be lying down.’ (p. 589)

All the World’s a Stage

Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre — Mariinsky Theatre, preeminent venue for music and ballet in 19th C. Russia

And then there are the spectacles. Society’s a stage where people are actors and spectators all at the same time. Tolstoy throws in many scenes reminding us that. When Anna and Vronsky come back to Petersburg, they appear separately in public at the theatre, something that Vronsky insists and Anna is indignant about. Vronsky seems to favour the spectator role, searching out people through his opera-glasses. In contrast, Anna would rather be the actor, bravely ignoring reverberations, be on centre stage. From his glasses, Vronsky saw Anna’s head, “proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling in its frame of lace.” But now that he has her the mystery vanishes. Her beauty, though still entices, begins to ‘offend’ (p. 546).

Anna, oh Anna…

If Anna could have detached more and emoted less… Of course, she has never expected how fickle love can be, or that passion is so short-lived or changeable due to varying circumstances, or that too much of it could smother and delude. Ironically, she does look before she leaps. If only she has used her rationale for better judgement rather than calculating when the middle between two train cars will come, all for satisfying her own delusional revenge on Vronksy.

Further, which should have been no surprise to her, that marriage has ties that linger even after intimacy ends. Anna does not choose Vronsky over her husband, but Vronsky over her son, the two loves of her life. She has chosen romance over motherhood. If I’m being a tad bit unsympathetic, maybe that’s Tolstoy’s doing.

What’s surprising to me is that Tolstoy is quite matter-of-fact about Anna’s predicament. His description of Anna’s tragic demise is just one paragraph, and after that, no more mention of her. Following that comes Part 8, wrapping up the whole book with the limelight on Levin. Quite puzzling really since the book is her namesake.

Levin … Tolstoy?

At the end, is Tolstoy offering a contrast to Anna’s tragic end by detailing Levin’s spiritual awakening? The master storyteller certainly doesn’t shy away from issues which would be considered sensitive subjects and even taboos today, like God, religion, spirituality and morality. So in the book entitled Anna Karenina, Levin has the last word. Umm… which leads to a speculation that Tolstoy might have ‘an agenda’ behind his writing. Is he proselytizing?

More and more these days, I’m seeing people getting edgy about others presenting the case for faith, especially taking offence when it comes to Christianity. Nobody would squirm a bit if suddenly one day you declare you’ve become a Zoroastrian. Mind you, Tolstoy’s handling of Levin’s conversion is reasonably and philosophically grounded, albeit that sudden spark of epiphany is too overwhelming and spontaneous to be rationalized.

And all is within context of the story. Levin, having exceedingly gratified by marital bliss, by the pure love of an angelic woman in Kitty, and witnessed the miracle of life in seeing the birth of his son, has opened unreservedly his heart and soul towards God. We can read it as it is, a convincing turn for a character who has consistently been authentic and genuine in his search for meaning.

If we take offence to this ending, suspecting a hidden agenda from Tolstoy, then we could well shed similar sentiments towards other writers whose faith, convictions, or philosophical viewpoints are presented overtly or seeped through silently in their works. Would we be equally alarmed or offended when we read, for example, Thomas Hardy with his naturalism, Camus and Sartre their existentialism, Graham Greene his Catholicism, Isaac Bashevis Singer his Judaism, Somerset Maugham his Buddhism, and for that matter, Salman Rushdie his atheism? There’s no neutral writing, is there? Every writer breathes into his writing that which stems from his or her own personal world view and hopefully authentic self.

Funny too how Tolstoy in his time could so freely describe Levin’s spiritual awakening and explicitly write about the argumentations for the Christian faith in a literary work. Just makes me think that there might be more freedom of expression in days past than in today’s society.

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So here we are, at the end of another Read-Along. Thanks to those who has participated in reading these 800 plus pages with me. To all who have stopped by the pond and thrown in a pebble or two, I’ve appreciated the ripples. To those who are just curious onlookers, your visits mean no less. It’s been a fun ride. Hopefully we’ll do another one in 2013. Will you join us then?

And now, to the movie…

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Do go and visit these other Read-Along participants and join in the discussion there:

Janell of An Everyday Life

Bellezza of Dolce Belleza

Care’s Online Book Club

Stefanie of So Many Books

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CLICK HERE to read my first post on Anna Karenina Read-Along: Parts 1 – 4

Photo of Mariinsky Theatre from russiantourguide.com