#NaNoReMo: What Walt Whitman Can Teach Me

I’m only a few pages into it but already I am absolutely astounded by the amount of love that this man has for the world he lives in, the body he occupies, the people he interacts with, the nature he sees, smells, feels and the entirety of the life that he lives. It just floors me.

Through his eyes everything- literally everything in existence- is a gift. And you can choose to accept it and if you do it can be used as a tool to build you up. (And it is equally true that it can tear you down, or that you can choose to reject it. But he rejects nothing.)

If you want to learn how to love your fellow man, read Walt Whitman. If you want to learn to love nature equally to the love you feel for the caress of your lover’s body, read Walt Whitman. If you want to let the morning light move you on a spiritual level, read Walt Whitman. If you want to embrace death rather than fearing it, read Walt Whitman. If you want every experience of your life to alter your perspective on life itself, read Walt Whitman.

At least, that’s what I’m getting out of it.

#NaNoReMo Book Review: Nicholas Nickleby

Well, it took me a full 30 days rather than the given 28, but I finally finished Nicholas Nickleby.  I have to say that I’m proud of myself, even with the extra time it took.  This was NOT an easy read.  And I’ve been thinking that it isn’t necessarily Dickens, but more just the style writing of the time.  I say this because many of the things that made this such a laborious process were the same things that made getting through Pride and Prejudice so difficult last year: the stylistic trademarks of the literature itself, rather than the voice of the author.

Sure, Dickens has a penchant for what I would qualify as run-on sentences.  A large number of those contained in the book average at a paragraph in length with more commas and semicolons than my mind could take in easily.  I found myself having to re-read several parts as my brain tripped over the wording and tried to make sense of the syntax which was so unfamiliar to me.  Not to mention that this book, like Pride and Prejudice, is now riddled with highlighted words and written-in definitions that came from stopping to look up something in the dictionary every few pages.  I have to admit, a lot of them seemed like pretty useful vocabulary and I’d be proud if I could absorb them all into my rather limited word bank.  But there were, of course, some that described things that one wouldn’t find outside of nineteenth century London and therefore were interesting only for historical purposes.  But again, that’s the style of the time and it’s impossible to look at this book separate from the period it took place in.

It’s also impossible to look at this book separate from the author who wrote it.  I’m sure that many might view that as a shortcoming, but it’s how Dickens made his career and earned his spot in the poet’s corner of Westminster Abbey.  Dickens is famous for his depictions of London lifestyle: the inhumane school systems, the corrupted legal system, the horror of the debtor’s prisons and the immoral treatment of all those who can’t buy their place in high society.  And his voice not only criticized but inspired enough public outrage over these systems as to actually bring about some change.  This is very clear in this volume where he takes aim at the Yorkshire school systems which he depicts with more clarity and reality than any of the characters.  People were so appalled by the depiction of Dotheboys Hall that many of the Yorkshire schools were shut down due to disgraced parents pulling their neglected children out of them.

Another setting which seems very real and fleshed out is the theatrical one in which the troupe of actors live.  The actors themselves make up their world with their costumes, speeches and posing.  And the tricks and tools they use to get funding, find new locales to play in, entice an audience and create their dramas seems like vivid recollections rather than creations (because they were).

But the bulk of the action takes place in London itself and Dickens fleshes out each street, neighborhood and district with the sights, smells, sounds, actions and characteristics from his own experience.  And the country side which he found so comforting comes out just as beautifully as they must have looked to him.  Every book of his that I’ve read has excelled in this way and again, I think that’s what made him so well-liked.  People would read his stories and know exactly where they were and what he was describing.  And his depictions of the small homes in which our heroes stay are so comforting one could wrap themselves up in them like a blanket.

Perhaps it is because his settings are so intensely real that his characters are critiqued so disparagingly.  A brief disclaimer here: Nicholas Nickleby is one of Dickens’s early works and comes from his light period- his career having been separated into two parts of light (earlier works) and dark (later works).  Every other book of his that I’ve read comes from his later era and has a decidedly darker tone.  In Nickleby, while there’s a lot of dark stuff that happens plot-wise, the bulk of the scenes are comedic and therefore the characters are meant to be humorous.  All of the actors, some of the family members, the high and low society peoples and even some of the villains look funny, do funny things and behave in funny ways.

I don’t know if it is because of this that so many of them are so one-dimensional, but that’s what they are.  They’re characters, images, stereotypes rather than real people and while they earn laughs they rarely show anything beyond the surface.  Even the main characters are pretty shallow and seem to be either plot devices (as is the case with the Cheeryble brothers or, as I call them, the two Santas) or blank slates upon which a moral structure is built.  The woman, especially, are terribly shallow and seem more like caricatures serving the satire or personifications in a morality play rather than real characters with thoughts, wants, or shortcomings.

The only character with any real depth is the primary antagonist who is more introspective, questions his own motives more and has a larger arc than any other character.  Ralph Nickleby is both the most evil and my favorite character in the entire book.  And several others who seemed promising in the beginning end up being big disappointments.

This was a harsh reality for me because after Great Expectations where the woman are just as conniving, scheming and struggling with their deficiencies as the men are I had hoped to see a similarly rich development here.  Especially since, unlike Great Expectations, Nickleby is told from the third person narrative so there’s a lot more room for observations,  judgments and questions.  While Dickens takes full advantage of that when talking about the characteristics of London lifestyle he drops it completely when talking about the woman here.  All this to say that when I make my next selection of Dickens it will certainly be from his darker era because it seems like that’s the place to find real character development.

Last but certainly not least, the plot.  Nicholas Nickleby is, at its most basic form, a love story.  There’s a double marriage at the end with a third close on its tail and all the heroes, for the most part, do live happily ever after.  There's also a lot of filial love and the love one feels in friendship which (in my opinion) hits home a lot more than straight-forward romance.  And it's is worth note, that another main character who is tragic at both the start and finish is mentioned in the very end: the very last scene has the children from these marriages playing on the grave of the poor, mistreated Smike.  It's a last reminder of the harsh reality of Dotheboys hall and of the wreakage left by our main protagonist's life and it was very gratifying.

But the interesting, meaty stuff is the many sub plots that proliferate the entire tome- the schemes, the downfalls of villains, the comeuppances of people who earn their new stations.  Dickens often juxtaposes these by splitting scenes, trying to introduce humor when things seem bleak and reality when things seems too hopeful.  And he often has different characters overlapping each other on the timeline and will remind you at the end of one scene that you only what these characters did, so he'll take you back to see what the other were doing.  It keeps you on your toes and breaks up the narractive in a way that I rarely see.

And of course, most of these both originate and end with Ralph Nickleby (thus why he has so much room to gain dimensions and why he's my favorite).  But the big problem with that, of course, is that the main character goes through all of this right along with him and ends up looking just as shallow at the end as he did in the beginning.  There’s a sense of having just witnessed a bad actor do a part that might have been much better liked with someone superior portraying him. 

None of this is to say, strangely enough, that I didn’t like the book.  In the end, I would have to say I did.  While it doesn’t hold a candle to any of his other works I’ve read it is endearing in its lightheartedness, I like a lot of the ideas espoused in the pages, the sub plots are interesting enough that I’ll remember them and Ralph Nickleby is a good enough villain that he will be added to my list of great Dickens characters, right along with Miss Havisham- a woman!  And most of all, Dickens plays around enough stylistically that it serves as a good example of how to broaden traditional third person narrative so my appreciation for him as an author is not at all deteriorated from having read this.

In the end I’m glad that I read this, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.  If you’re a hard-core Dickens fan, it’s a must read.  If you’re a Dickens hater, skip it because this will probably just give you more ammunition to fire.  And if you’re a Dickens virgin, start with something from his later works because that will open up the door a lot wider than this could.

The Giant End of February Everything Post

With so many things to address, I'm not gonna piece-meal.  So here’s what’s up with everything relevant at the moment.

#NaNoReMo

Nicholas Nickleby is not an easy read.  I know that I’ve defended Charles Dickens in the past from those who claimed that he was entirely too verbose to earn their respect and although I’m not done defending him (or being a fan of his, in general) I must say that I REALLY get their point now.  Great Expectations is shockingly short in comparison to many of his other tales, so we’ll leave that out of the comparison.  But David Copperfield was a long read by anyone’s gauge and I found it much easier to get through for some reason.  I’m not sure why, but this book has made me achingly aware of how long it is, how the majority of the sentences contained within its pages are a paragraph long and contain more commas than I think should legally be allowed in a single sentence, how unnecessary some of the details are and how damned long it’s taking me to get through.  I’ve been reading everyday and I’m still close to 200 pages off from the end.

But this challenge is about reading a classic, not sticking to the rather arbitrary rule of doing it in the shortest month of the year.  And I console myself that if it had been January I’d still have 3 days left to finish this thing.  So I’m gonna keep reading as much as I can during my free time with the aim of completing it by Saturday and assuming I finish it by then I’m gonna count it as a win, even though it’ll technically be March.  Stay tuned for the review.

Buddy

So we got the biopsy results on Tuesday.  As I said before, we were pretty confident they were going to be negative; our thinking being that if he actually had this there would have been some other symptoms to verify that.  So when I got a voicemail from the surgeon saying “everything looks good” I naturally interpreted that to mean “His liver is healthy” and “he doesn’t have microvascular dysplasia" (henceforth referred to as MD) and whatnot.  Dave and I had a brief sigh of relief over lunch during which we discussed what timeline we should pursue in terms of taking him off the special diet and planned to happily return to life as it was before the seizures.

Imagine our surprise when we called the doctor to discuss things in more detail and heard that he does, in fact, have MD.  There was a brief moment of “what, now?” during which we had to throw out our list of questions and come up with a bunch of news ones, primary of which was “Wait a second- he does?!?”  While reassuring us that MD is an extremely common (among small dogs) and easily manageable condition which should in no way negatively impact the health of our little guy, he failed to clearly explain to us how results showing that he definitely has a certain disease equate to “good”.

It wasn’t until our regular vet (who is way more attentive and on top of things than any doctor that’s ever treated me, a human) explained it to us in layman’s terms that we felt better.  She stated that yes, it is extremely common and that most dogs never show any signs of it and you’d never even know they had it and only a few need special medication or diet or have negative health problems because of it.  If not for the seizures, she said, we never would have even identified it.  And although the diet is the plan du jour it is by no means guaranteed to be required- we might still try to take him off of it at some point in the future and see how he does; cause chances are decent that he won’t even need it.  And while they’ll have to be aware when treating him with medications that’ll be processed in the liver in the future, that’s really the only special precautions we should need to take.

She also said that while we had been operating under the belief that the ultrasound we did when this all went down had been definitive in ruling out a shunt, this biopsy was done largely for the same reason so “good” meant “he doesn’t have a shunt”- which we thought we already knew.  Oy.  At any rate, while deflated, Dave and I are hopeful that once our poor little guy gets his stitches taken out and we can finally remove the cone (which he hates more than anything in existence) he’ll be back to normal and since this is all done he shouldn’t need surgery again- ever.  We’ve told him that everybody gets one and he’s blown his so now he’ll just have to shut up and be healthy.  (Being a dog, we’re concerned he didn’t quite understand what we were saying.  But we’ll keep trying.)

More Stress

Friday was a rough day for me.  With Buddy in surgery for most of the morning/early afternoon I was glued to my phone, anxiously awaiting updates from the vet.  While I refused to believe in even the possibility of Buddy not coming through it just fine, I was still pretty anxious to see that he did.  I had a brief but momentous sigh of relief upon hearing that he was ok which was shattered by the phone call home to tell my parents of this.

“Don’t freak out,” my dad said, “but mommy’s in the hospital.”

Don’t freak out?  Sure, no problem.  It’s not like I’ve been on edge all day anyway. 

Now, my mom had told me that she thought she might have a slight case of food poisoning when I’d spoken to her on Wednesday but I really didn’t think much of it because she’d told me that she was feeling better and thought it was done.  It wasn’t food poisoning and it wasn’t done.

We never technically found out what the hell it was- tests they did in the hospital came back negative for E. coli, salmonella and all the other big names in serious gastro-intestinal illness.  But IV fluids and liquid diet were useless in slowing down the vomiting and diarrhea.  She was admitted to the hospital Thursday night and wasn’t discharged until Tuesday.  TUESDAY.  That’s 8 full days of illness, 5 of which were spent in the hospital.

My aunt is a nurse practitioner and one of the smartest people I know.  Every crisis, every serious medical illness and every new diagnosis she’s on the phone with us talking about it, letting us know what cases of it she’s treated and how people dealt with it, e-mailing us information and helpful web sites and explaining what the doctor told us in clear terms that we can understand.  She is a saint.  And she called me to let me know her hypothesis: that this was one of 3 “super bugs” that were going around wreaking havoc on people’s digestive systems.  While some people get sick for a day or two with little impact on their ability to function, some people, like my mother, get really sick.  A perfect example of this is the fact that my father came down with similar symptoms on Sunday but was already starting to feel better by Monday night.  And because it’s a virus there’s not really all that much you can do other than wait for it to run its course.

When I first heard all this I was fully prepared to leave Dave in charge of Buddy and drive up to New York to see her.  My mother told me- in no uncertain terms- that Buddy needed me more than she did.  Thank God, because it seems quite possible that I could’ve gotten whatever she and my dad (and now my brother) had.

At any rate, this all served as a pretty big scare that ultimately amounted to a reminder of how dangerous these things we regularly get exposed to can be.  I wish there was some other lesson that came out if- like how to avoid contracting it.  But I suppose all you can really do is know that there’s the possibility of these things, and to not hesitate to seek out medical attention if you’re really sick.

So that’s been the week.  Crazy stressful, not the best for finishing a book, and overall something I’ll be very happy has passed once it’s done.

#NaNoReMo Update: Heroes and Villains

Imagine if a select minority of people, for no particular reason, were telepathic.  Not because of radioactivity or an alien ring or anything seen in comics, but just by birth.  They wouldn't look or necessarily act any differently then you or I, but they’d read everyone around them, know their motives and navigate accordingly.  Some people would undoubtedly use this power for good, others for evil, and others probably wouldn't know what to do with it.  But they’d all see the world very differently from those around them.

Well, that is the world of Nicholas Nickleby.  Save that instead of telepathy, our heroes and villains have what was once mistakenly described as common sense.  They see the world around them for what it really is, they can judge people by their actions rather than their appearances and they use these judgments to attempt to navigate the world.  At this point, there’s only a select few who clearly have this power- the book’s namesake, of course, his sister, their uncle and an associate of his who is somehow simultaneously more real and more mysterious than any of the other characters thus far.

Let’s begin with the book’s namesake, since he’s obviously our hero.  While shrewd, Mr. Nickleby is a very young man and therefore his powers of observation and sound judgment are tempered by his inexperience.  While quick on the pick-up he misses a lot when it comes to new situations, women and the business world.  However, he’s proving to be a quick wit so far and seems increasingly capable of changing his appearance depending on the context of the situations in which he finds himself (a talent aided by his time in the theater); so I assume we can expect a very interesting arc from him as the story progresses.

Next up is Mr. Ralph Nickleby, our primary antagonist and uncle to our hero.  While portrayed as a somewhat heartless man there’s a fierce practicality to him that actually has me preferring him to some of the other supposed heroes of the tale.  This comes from a difficult upbringing, not unlike what our hero experienced, which imparted Ralph with an unshakable belief that money is the only thing in the world that maters.  This belief has led him to lead a rather solitary life (since relationships are the one sure-fire way to lose money) and to avoid interactions which don’t directly serve a business-related purpose.  Although he often causes great injury to those around him I appreciate the logic with which he does it: it’s calculated, thought out and concluded best based on his belief system and this automatically puts him worlds ahead of those who injure for the sake of injury.  I’m looking forward to seeing how his arc progresses.

Nicholas has a sister, Kate, who is shockingly similar to him in disposition.  She is naturally sweet, terribly naive but also very aware of the people around her.  Like her brother, she is able to mimic the appearance expected of her, to a certain extent.  But unlike him, she is boxed in by the limitations of her sex in that time period and therefore must rely on the assistance of men to get what she needs in life.  Being true of heart she never purposefully manipulates, but speaks honestly (if a little dramatically) to those she encounters.  A characteristic which, needless to say, gets her into a lot of trouble.  I have to say that despite her true-of-heart nature I find her rather dull and am not terribly interested in what she’ll end up doing; especially because I imagine it’ll just be to marry a nice guy eventually.

Last but certainly not least is Mr. Newman Noggs.  Newman is Mr. Ralph Nickleby’s assistant and therefore ends up bearing a lot of bad news to his associates.  But he never hesitates to intervene when he deems such bad news reckless, deliberately hurtful, or extreme (which is often the case when it comes to Ralph's family).  Thankfully his employer seems to be oblivious to all of this meddling so he’s able to do a lot of good without consequence to his station; but he is greatly limited by that station and therefore confined to meddling rather than grand heroic acts.  He’s had the least on-screen time of any main character so far but these glimpses of him have only served to make the mystery that much more intriguing and I’d have to say I’m most interested in seeing how his story ends.

Although this is just a tiny portion of the many characters in the story it does represent a rather complete view of those with the power of discernment.  Everyone else I’ve seen to this point is rather clueless or one-dimensional.  They’re either lower class individuals foolishly worshiping, mimicking and discussing the upper class; upper class individuals defined by their possessions, mannerisms and money; ruthless villains that play like caricatures rather than people; whimsical actors defined by their craft or clueless followers with very little going on upstairs.  Yes, they serve up the majority of the humor, action and mechanisms of plot- but I doubt I’m going to remember any of them when the story is done.

I suspect I’ll meet one or two more individuals with this power as the plot progresses and they’ll have their own part to play in the overall arc.  But for now, those are the major players.  And I’ll have more to say on the writing (verbose!), the style (satire) and the settings in later posts.  In the meantime, I hope you’re all having fun with your own reads.

Me and Nicholas Nickleby

So last year, as part of my 2012 reading challenge, I began the daunting task of reading Nicholas Nickleby.  I have long been a fan of Dickens and I have long defended him against those who claimed that he was entirely too needlessly verbose to rightfully carry the credit so many literary scholars have given him over the years.  While I'm not about to abandon my stance that he is a great author I do have to admit that I found myself feeling acutely aware of the fact that he was being paid by the word as I slogged my way through the book. 

I was aware when I advanced through the chapters far more slowly than I thought I should be able to, I was aware when the month I had given myself to finish the book ended without me being even a quarter of the way through and I was painfully aware when I found myself procrastinating over and over again when I thought that I really should just sit down and read the damned thing.  After months of this I gave up on both the book and the reading challenge.

But I began this year by vowing to try it again and what better time to seek vengeance on my sloth than by challenging myself to finally finish the book for NaNoReMo, which John is once again hosting.  I admit, I find myself feeling very nervous about the fact that tomorrow marks the beginning of the shortest month of the year and I’m due to reach the end of this massive tome in only 28 days.  But I do have a significant head start and way more determination than I had the first time around- mainly because if I let this thing defeat me for a second time I will never forgive myself.

So this is me vowing to read- in its entirety- Nicholas Nickleby.  I will be linking back up to the Bathroom Monologues for blog hopping purposes as I post entries related to my progress and when I finally post my final review.  For those of you who are also participating, please post a comment and let me know so I can follow your progress as well.  For everyone else, wish me luck!

Pride and Prejudice (Final Review)

I had hoped to be writing this review with lots of new insights, observations and enthusiastic descriptions of the book. My expectations going into this were rather high, after all. It’s been labeled as one of the top 100 most loved books of all time and touted as Austen’s best novel by several friends of mine who count themselves as fans of hers. So I really wanted to love this and to be able to say that I, too, was a proud Austen fan at the end of it.
Alas, I cannot make that claim. The key points that stuck out for me are not that different at the end than they were only a few pages in.

First Point: Language. The language remained a buffer between me and an in-depth involvement with Austen’s world throughout the entire book. Whatever insecurities I may have about admitting that point it doesn’t make it any less true. And what’s more, I think I would have been able to see past all those words that required me to go back to the dictionary yet again if there had been more passages, lines or witty observations that I loved. But in the end my copy is riddled with highlighted words and written-in definitions with a shockingly small number of passages or lines that were highlighted because I thought they were great for whatever reason. For those of you who like numbers I will sum it up thus:
Number of great passages, lines or descriptions I highlighted because I liked them: 17
Number of words I highlighted because they required a dictionary look-up: 59

Now again, I am fully aware that this book is written in proper English which is shockingly different than the slang-laden, over-conjugated hybrid Americanized version of English that I speak. But in the end it did not flow the way that books I label as “great books” tend to flow. And to emphasize this I will point out that I’ve read a decent amount of Charles Dickens who also wrote in proper English and I don’t recall having that much trouble with him. I recall sitting down and reading David Copperfield for hours at a time and being captivated enough that there was actual flow to the reading. I never got that sensation with this book.

Second Point: Characters. Elizabeth is terribly witty, no one is going to argue about that. And her arc is somewhat engaging since we see her go through the various emotions one would expect a well fleshed-out character to go through: the titled prejudice, the feelings of inferiority and embarrassment, the guilt, the accompanying self-blame, the hope and counter-acting realism, and, at long-last, the love which is, of course, the entire point. But I would not put her in the same company as some other characters that I have loved over the years. I just didn’t connect with her on that level.

And the only other character who even gets a chance to be multi-dimensional is Darcy who, for all his soul-bearing letters and plot-advancing background remains relatively mysterious throughout the book. And that is simply because we’re following Elizabeth’s point-of-view most of the time. We don’t get to see what’s going on behind Darcy’s stern looks so we just don’t get the chance to connect to him.

The rest of them? While they certainly have entertaining elements, they’re all way too one-dimensional for my taste. Jane is sweet and kind without a negative word to say about anyone and remains so (save for one tiny conceding statement about the irredeemable quality of one character) till the end. Mr. Bennet never stops being a recluse who is terribly irresponsible in regards to managing his family.  Mrs. Bennet never stops being an exploitative twit.  Lydia never learns anything above superficial obsessions, nor does her new husband Wickham.  Mr. Collins never stops being the worst kind-of self-righteously judgmental asshole and Lady de Bourgh never learns to see anyone outside of the qualities assigned to them by their station. (And the other characters don’t even get enough pages to be anything other than passing names.)

And don’t get me wrong- I understand that Austen’s main point is that they don’t change, they don’t learn anything from the events of the book and therefore they don’t grow. I assume she’s demonstrating that often people we see in everyday life have the same lack-of growth. And that’s a valid point. But it doesn’t make for an interesting read.

Third Point: Austen’s quirks, I guess you would call them, as a writer are… well, rather annoying to me, to be perfectly honest. The whole not identifying the speaker thing got on my nerves like there was no tomorrow. And her habit of making the reader painfully aware of how irritating a character is for prattling on incessantly about inane topics by having them prattle on incessantly about inane topics for pages seems like a waste of ink. I will quote myself here: "Really? Like we couldn’t tell after the first paragraph? Does Lydia or Mrs. Bennet really have to keep going on for another… two pages?! Ugh!"

And this bugs me most of all: it seemed like there was almost a shift of POV sometimes. We’d be following Elizabeth’s train of thought, and then there’d be this background information that Elizabeth had absolutely no way of knowing just sort-of stuck in there with no transition whatsoever. Where did that come from? Who is actually narrating this thing? In the very last chapter there is a sentence that begins “I wish I could say” when talking about Mrs. Bennet’s appraisal. Who the hell is the ‘I’? And why haven’t they said anything before the second to last page? What is that?!? I understand third person omniscient but saying I is first person observer, isn’t it? And sure, you can change POV if you want to. But you have to do it with purpose, not just stick it in there with no warning and no stylistic meaning to demonstrate its value! That drove me crazy!

Final Point, and this is the big one: Austen’s whole world is simply one that I don’t want to be in. If I thought that a good marriage was the most important thing that could ever happen to someone in their lifetime then I might have been on the edge of my seat over Elizabeth and Darcy finally getting their heads out of their asses. But I don’t think that. I am far more interested in the challenges that people surmount and the reason they make the choices they do and the struggles involved in real growth than I am in anything having to do with marriage. And this book has none of that. It’s all very surface level proper English parlor-room tea-time discussions, no depth.

Hell, we don’t even know what these people do when they’re not having discussions about marriage. No one seems to work in this book- no one has a job, no one even has interests! I mean, we see Elizabeth reading books and playing the piano but she doesn’t seem terribly interested in either of those activities. I’m not saying that passion is the most interesting thing in the word, but it helps. And it tends to lead to desperation which is an amazing motivator that can get characters to make huge shifts that are fascinating to read. There’s way too much composure and propriety for my tastes. Too much marriage, not enough actual love.

And yes, I get that this is the world she was writing in. In Austen’s time if a woman was not able to secure a financially stable matrimony then she was, for all intensive purposes, irrevocably doomed. And I understand why Austen was so intent to make that point in her writings. But as a woman who values all the things that now exist in my life because society doesn’t function that way anymore I find that horrifically depressing to read about.

So in the end, I am not a fan of Austen. I do not like reading about the matrimonial concerns of woman in the world of the landed gentry, I do not like Austen’s writing style and I therefore do not see myself trying out Sense and Sensibility, no matter how many movies they make about it. But, I am proud of myself for having read this because if I hadn’t I would have missed this behemoth of a figure in classic literature and not known what all the fuss was about. I wouldn’t have known about all of those dislikes and I wouldn’t have known what I now know about myself. It’s a point well made that what we dislike says just as much if not more about us as what we do.  And it's good to know that from first hand experience.

Pride and Prejudice: First Thoughts

So I’m only 20 chapters in and already there are a few things that I just have to comment on.  Since I am still so early on, the bulk of this will not pertain to the story but rather to the first things that struck me about this classic book. 

1) The language is NOT what I’m used to.  It’s not quite Shakespeare- I don’t need an English lit teacher to decipher every line, but there’s a lot in common with Shakespeare.  First off, there are quite a lot of words that simply don’t exist in modern vocabulary anymore.  Shew is used instead of show as in “a women had better shew more affection than she feels” and "chuse" is used instead of "choose".  And they sometimes sound like Yoda.  “Are not you…?”  “Will not he…?”  I’m sure it was common place at the time, but it trips me up a little as I’m reading.  Secondly, there are a lot of references to things that I’ve never heard of- like ragout (a heavily spiced stew) or loo and piquet (card games).  These fit perfectly well with the story but require me to keep a wikipedia page open whenever I’m reading.  Not that I couldn’t guess by the context and be close, but my curiosity dictates that I know just what it is, not approximately.  Thirdly, and this I hate admitting, but there are simply quite a large number of words I just don’t know because my vocabulary is sadly limited.  I have been looking up the definition for at least one word per page.  Indolent. Panegyric. Laconic.  Iniquitous.  These words do not exist in my daily vocabulary and without my dictionary next to me I’d be perpetually lost in a sea of near understanding.  All in all, I hate to admit, it kind of takes me out of the story.

2) The conversations are a little hard to follow.  Not because of all those words I’m not familiar with, but because Austen is not a fan of ending sentences with “Elizabeth said” or “Mr Collins remarked” or in any other way denoting the speaker.  Which, in a conversation between two people, alone in a room, is not a big deal.  But in a conversation of four people, or five or six in which two were talking when a third piped in and then was interrupted by a fourth who was making an offhand comment from their conversation with a fifth it gets a little hard to follow.  Luckily, the characters are strong enough that you can usually tell who’s speaking by the third or fourth scene with them, so I suppose it’s not the end of the world.

3) There are some timeless universals which, I believe, are what make the book so beloved despite the somewhat dated language.  The embarrassment one feels when one’s mother is speaking overzealously in front of one’s friends, or worse- the object of one’s affection.  The efforts one puts into sounding smart or witty or well-educated when presenting oneself to a new group of people.  The intricacies of a specific family: the pecking order, the comic relief, the pontificating one, the stupid one, the secret (or not so secret) favorite.  The near-death feeling of having decidedly put one’s foot very far down one’s throat in front of someone one hates.  All of these come through brilliantly clear in Austen’s writing and make me feel silly for being at all annoyed by all those obsolete words I trip over.

4) The English parlor room must have been a truly magical place.  From what I can tell, every manor of repute had one and it was the place where every major thing that ever occurred in a manor took place.  Quiet evenings spent reading books by the fire, card games where stately men squabbled over politics, tea parties where women discussed the merit of a proposed marriage and meetings of the two proposed that determined whether or not the all-important proposal would come about.  It could be calm and comforting or a battle field strewn with the corpses of civilized conversations.  Having never been in an English manor I can’t imagine what having one of these magical places inside of one’s own home must have been like, but it seems like it would have been the source of endless excitement.

5) Literary professors and English scholars who know a hell of a lot more about classic literature have already written countless essays on this so I’ll keep my point brief by simply agreeing that the first line of the book is one of the best first lines of any book ever.  “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”  Bam!  The entire world, described in one single sentence.  The name of the game is marriage.  And every single person is playing that game, whether they want to or not.  If they’re not actively moving around the pieces on the game board they are being positioned by those playing.  I’m not sure I’ve encountered something so simply yet beautifully summed up so quickly.

 As I said, these are simply my first thoughts.  I’m sure I will have many others to share as I wade deeper into this pool of matrimonial monopoly.

NaNoReMo 2012

A few days ago, I was reading my friend John’s blog and found an entry on National Novel Reading Month.  How red did I turn when reading this, for I have never even heard of NaNoReMo before John pointed it out to me.  Well, I did a little investigating and, according to all the sites I could find with a title of National Novel Reading Month, I’m actually already two weeks behind.  Ugh!  I discover something I didn’t even know existed and already I’m late on a dead line?  Well, that is far too much pressure for the very first day of a year in which my every goal comes under the umbrella of acceptance, so I’m tossing the rules of NaNoReMo as they are written and simplifying things for myself- no four novels in four weeks and no trying to cram two into the two remaining weeks until January 15^th.  Nah, I’m just gonna go the simple route and read a novel.

John has suggested looking over one’s bookshelf for a classic- something highly recommended by many that you bought because it was on sale or was given to you by a friend which you always meant to read but somehow never quite got around to.  Well, I took a look at my bookshelf and what should I find but one that John himself was contemplating reading: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  I picked it up and thought “Wait- I’ve already read this, haven’t I?”

I have seen many different film versions of Pride and Prejudice (like, at least three).  I’ve heard references to it in so many different forms of media that I can’t even list them all.  The names of the main love interests- Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy- are so familiar to me that I list them among other characters too well known to forget.  And yet, what should I discover when I open that first page that there’s nothing- not a dog ear, not an underlined passage, not even a crease in the spine- that indicates that I’ve ever actually read the thing.

Needless to say, I was appalled.  How on earth could I claim to be a lover of the written word when I’ve never even read what is arguably the best-known novel from one of the best-known authors?  I’m so ashamed I feel I cannot go on one more day without repairing this horrific mistake.  So I’m going to read Pride and Prejudice.  And, of course, blog about it. Stay tuned.