Reading serious books

                                           

Actually, this is what I have been doing lately. There are times I find it very rewarding and there are times I feel that it is a hard work and that I may be missing the point. Reading is supposed to be the time of my pleasure…and learning. Actually, learning is one of my important values and even my strength as the Strength Finder test told me. The test placed learning in the third place of the list of my personal five strengths. The first is Intellection. Hmm…I am supposed to be introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions (whatever intellectual discussions might be?). I know, I like conversations, even the gossipy ones. This may not be all that intellectual after all. Introspective is my game though, most definitely. Reading serious books and thinking about their meaning may be just my thing.

I have been reading The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt in the last two weeks. Good book but it may be more than I wanted. Today I have finished it and my final reaction was: WOW!!! I sat stunned, shocked and depressed for quite a while gathering my thoughts and trying to regain emotional equilibrium. It is a definitely a good book, very well written, interesting structure, packed with intellectual observations, exploring interesting philosophical options. I would call it literature not just a book. So, why do I think that this may be enough for me of Siri Hustvedt? 

Mainly because it is a disturbing book. It takes too many idealistic illusions away from the reader. I perhaps need some lighter reading from time to time. It may have been too much of Ishiguro with his sad observations of life, followed by two books by Hustvedt. I may for a while switch to something lighter.  Reading serious books carries some danger with it. The danger of creeping up pessimism and depression.

The book is good though, very good. Siri Husdvedt is a wife of Paul Auster who is an American writer and director; apparently of a greater fame than his wife. I have not read any of his books, so I take the comparison of the couple’s writing as per general opinion. Anyhow, the perception is that Siri Hustvedt is the wife of the famous Paul Auster and not the other way around.  Generally, the public does not think that it is Paul Auster who is the husband of his famous wife. 

                        

The book is about Harriet Burden, a painter, who is a wife of a famous art dealer. Her artistic talents are concerned as insignificant by the artistic NY society, she is better known as an organiser of her husband’s dinner parties. Harry, as Harriet is called by her friends, is a remarkable woman, possessing brilliant intellect and great artistic talent. She is a woman, though, and this is her problem. She understands that there is nobody who would want to help her to get recognized as a brilliant artist, so she comes up with an idea to publish her work as a man. She finds three artists who agree to give their names to her work, and under the male names, her work gains spectacular recognition. There are very positive reviews in the press, people are prepared to pay high prices for the work. She becomes very successful, but under cover. Not as herself. She was planning a coming out as her life success, but this does not work out. Two of the artists reveal that Harry is the creator of the art they got recognition for, but the third one makes a mockery out of her claims. The deviousness and cruelty of Rune, this is the name of the artist, is frightening. Harry is humiliated and loses on all fronts.   

One could say that this is a book to present the misogynistic nature of our world, and it is, but there is much more than that Siri Hustvedt wants to tell us. It is a book about masks we put on and the influence of that on the way we act. I examined my own life for masks I had been wearing, quite revealing… I would recommend a little examination of the roles we play in our life, as we inevitably do, the masks we put on willingly or not even realizing that we put them on. They, in a profound way, change the way we act. 

I found parts of the book related to our perception of the world very interesting. Me writing about it will not bring any revelations as I need to think more about it, but the book brought to me, observations related to how culture influences individual perceptions of the world. I want to explore it in the future.

The book is written by a stream of narrators. Harry, herself, speaks through her diaries, there are interviews with several artists, there are voices belonging to her children, friends, lover, acquaintance… The result is impressive even if I found it, at times, difficult to read because of the sudden changes.

A remarkable book in many ways.

Random thoughts

I am going through a little strange time in my life, a time when I have reached a high degree of detachment from my everyday interests and activities. I went through a rather serious and planned hospital procedure four days ago. It was my decision rather than necessity. Even if I took it well and things went accordingly to plan, it was a lot of unknowns involved and this is normally stressful. I somehow managed to transport to a bubble where my priorities were concentrated on the best emotional preparation for what was to come. Now it is time to come back to normal, but it is comfortable in my bubble. I am free of any duties, so I read, think, watch serials on my PC, play bridge online and sleep. Rather nice, especially that there is no pain involved only some tiredness.

                                                      

This type of life does not give me many subjects to write about. This will soon come when I progress with the books I read. It is The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt, Madame Bovary, Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard and perhaps a story or two from Nocturnes by my latest favourite writer Kazuo Ishiguro. A lot to read at the same time, I admit. The Blazing World is my focus.

For now, I think I will come back to the subject of my previous post on Chekhov and modern adaptations of his plays. I have been thinking about it a bit as I felt uncomfortable with my way of receiving the Sydney performance. I thought, I thought and I came to the same conclusions as earlier on. I think it is disrespectful by a translator of a classical master to change the form of the original play, its climate, mood, type of language and even the story. Very little of The Tree Sisters is left after Upton’s treatment. The text like this one cannot be updated to the extent it has been done this time. It is the duty of the translator and the director of the play to serve the master rather than modify his text to serve a personal purpose. I wonder what was supposed to be achieved. Feeling bigger than Chekhov? Making it easier for the public to get it? Not good ideas in my mind.

Chekhov was a wise man who loved the characters he depicted in his plays and showed what was going inside them with tenderness, but with honesty nevertheless. This, in my opinion, the Sydney adaptation missed. I felt that the characters were mocked and judged. Very un-Chekhov. The sense of humour was another miss. Chekhov’s sense of humour is deep and subtle. I could not say anything like that about the play I saw. It was just crude.

Perhaps it is enough on the subject coming from somebody who is not a theatre critic. 

The Three Sisters of Upton

Why did I want to see Chekhov in Sydney? I have been schooled in Poland and the Russian classics were mandatory readings and discussions at my school. Russian and Polish natures are somewhat similar, but I must confess that I often found it difficult to comprehend or at least embrace some of the feelings described in the Russian literature. The XIX century may have something to do with it and the Russian classics are mainly of that time. The naked emotions presented in Chekhov may be embarrassing and not convincing for some Anglo-Saxon people and contemporary Australian audience in particular. And I still wanted to see the play. Hmm…

Sydney way

Classical way

Yes, I was disappointed big way. I am not sure what it was. It may have been even a good performance, but not of Chekhov. The only thing I could recognised were the names, the rest of the adaptation were variations on some general themes concerning existential issues. Even yearning for Moscow disappeared from the text and was replaced by “I want to go home”.

I understand that some of the new adaptations divert from the original text, but this time my disappointment was acute. It could be a personal issue as I never could deal, for example, with Romeo and Julietta riding bikes. For some reason, this time, I expected to see a classic play. Wrong assumption and too early bought tickets to the performance. At the time there was no indication of how the play will be treated and presented.

Maybe I need to get more flexible? Less critical of different tastes to my own? I still found The Tree Sisters of Upton rude, crude and distant to Chekhov's climate.

Why Ishiguro was surprised about getting the Nobel Prize?

                                                           

I am not sure what the answer to this question should be as I just finished his third book When We Were Orphans and I am very, very impressed by the essence of the story, the language, and structure of the book. I find it relevant to my life and the extent of it is almost scary. The messages of the book are universal of course, but I feel like it was about my life and my experiences.

Surely, Kazuo Ishiguro must understand the weight of his own creative talent, even if many consider the 2017 Prize in Literature as controversial. Can such a great talent be so blind to his own greatness? Or is he possibly suspicious that he could not be understood? Or maybe just too modest?

I must say that I heard more negatives about his work than serious positives. One of my authorities declared that Ishiguro writes for women. Well, would it be so that men cannot see the deeper meaning? This is not my observation and most of the men would disagree with such statement. I suspect that this view (writer for women) may be shared by some and I think that this may be due to the very successful film based on The Remains of the Day. I liked the film very much and saw it more than once, but admittingly I did not fully get its deeper meaning after seeing the film. Was it lost in production or was it overshadowed by the brilliant performance of Hopkins and Thompson? I would agree that in the film there was something that women would particularly like. The old British ways attractive and surroundings elegant.

Having read three books of Ishiguro in the last month I am in awe of the writer’s talent. In self-defense (I did not want to get depressed) I decided that I will not read Never Let Me Go, but the three books I have read so far are profoundly sad anyhow. Still, I am glad that I have read them. I understood a few more things about myself and life. Maybe I have now a little more acceptance causing sadness, but it has been a high time to come to certain conclusions even if some innocence of thinking is gone.

The book can be considered a bildungsroman. I seem to have read lately many books belonging to this category and I value the lessons stemming from them. I would divide the book into three parts. The first part of the book is about the innocence of Christopher Banks, the hero of the book.

The second part is the transition from naivety to the point of seeing things we at first do not want and are not able to see. This is a very painful process for anyone. Ishiguro describes it by setting the action in horrific events of the Sino-Japanese war. We enter a nightmare of Christopher Banks. The events do not follow logical rules and are difficult to comprehend, but the emotional impact on the reader is profound. I believe that this was the intention of the Ishiguro and I consider it masterful.

There is hurt on both sides of the front line of fighting, nobody is right or wrong but everybody suffers. The most horrific scenes, for me, are a young girl nursing her dying dog and asking for help for her puppy. She is not getting it of course.  Maybe one could also take the front-line scenes as an expression of pacifism.

When the action moves back to reality, Christopher is able to hear explanations concerning the events of his childhood. The explanations follow logic again and the hero is able to comprehend and accept the difficult truth about losing his parents.

Not to write a spoiler I need to be a bit enigmatic about one story that caught my particular attention and made me ponder on it for a while. The story is about a couple where the man does not think himself worthy of the women he lives with. He feels inadequate and tries to live up to higher standards than his partner represents. This lasts for a while, but it is too much for the man and eventually, he runs away with another woman. The new woman does not set too high standards, so he does not feel challenged. I wonder how often we meet such situations in real life. I suspect that it is quite often.

This is another story of love that could have happened but, similar to one in The Remains of the Day, never did. The reasons for the romantic failure are similar in both of the books. The professional life of the men gets in the way of giving time to love a woman or even realise a possibility of happiness other than work. They both are passionate about their work, we would call them workaholics these days. The result of their priorities is the loss of personal happiness and the realisation of it comes too late.

I sometimes wonder if such things like happy relationships exist beyond the stages of initial infatuation. Hmm… But this is another subject.

The Only Living Boy in New York

I have not seen a movie for a while, quite uncharacteristic for me, but my local cinema has not shown anything interesting for quite a while. I am even wondering what is the reason for that. Change of ownership, lack of money, change of a person who selects the films?  I must say that lately I have not much ventured outside my suburb so I even did not know if the repertoire of other theatres has been any better. Recently my favourite occupation is bridge and the club, I play at, has developed its own social circles. One of them is the circle of movie goers. I have been asked a couple of times by one of the players if I have seen The Only Living Boy in New York. My answer was that I do not think it is on in the local cinema. It has not been, but the friend brought to my attention that there are other movie theatres in Sydney than the one nearby. Quite a revelation, one might say, so I checked and I found the movie some distance from my place, but even without a car quite easy to get to. My horizons suddenly expended and I have seen the film today. I am glad I did as I enjoyed it. Maybe the film did not have many situation  I could really relate to, but it is a good story even if a bit convoluted.

Does Callum Turner (left) look like young Richard Gere? 

                                   

I would describe the film as sleek. It was pleasant to watch the known good actors and young ones with a promise. I liked the elegant interiors and the New York scenery. The film is about literary crowd of people: writers and their disciples, publishers and critics. Consequently, the dialogs intended to be sophisticated and some of them are, but many are just trying to follow the intended mood not presenting much depth or originality.

The story is about a young man, son of a famous publisher and a neurotic, intellectual but very warm mother (played by Cynthia Nixon of Sex in the City, I liked her in this film). He wants to be a writer but his father's view is that his work is just "serviceable"  so he is confused and tries to figure out what to do with his life. Being very young he rebels and leaves the elegant home of his parents searching for  his own ways. He meets his neighbour who starts to play a role of his mentor and a guide through  maze of literature circles. The boy, Tom, sees one day his father with another woman and in defense of his too sensitive mother tries to stop the romance by demanding of the girl to stop seeing his father. Instead he also lands up in bed with the girl and here the real story starts leading to a surprising happy end. Maybe too much of meandering, but to me it was fun, even if I most likely soon forget the film.

My attention caught the question about a definition of love and reasons behind people thinking that they love another person. Apparently, the answers do not have to be romantic or idealistic at all. It can be to fix childhood traumas and created earlier needs, it can be just lust, it can be fascination with some parts of the character or abilities of the object of love, it can be sort of dependence and many other reasons based on needs of the “loving” person. I do not quite like this approach, but must say that there is something in it, even if not palatable to romantic souls.

Another “golden thought” that made me ponder and agree with is “anything good happens by accident”. Hmm… so what about living on purpose? Or planning our lives? On second thought, this is not a revelation.

I enjoyed my outing, I liked the theatre, as sleek and the film itself. I liked a lot about the film even if some of the ideas were a bit too contrived, like choices in the soundtrack. Song of Simon and Garfunkel “The Only Living Boy in New York” is about Tom, the same name as the young hero of the film. And Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” with Johanna being another film character. Good music though, so I really do not complain.

The Buried Giant

                                  

I have been reading the book with mixed feelings. The fantasy literature and art in general are not something I enjoy or even understand. A bit of a shortcoming of mine. The practical streak in me is very strong and I think I owe it to my great father. Not that I consider myself great, but this is one thing I must have picked from him.

At school I never warmed up to romanticism, I may have understood some of it, but the form never convinced me or seemed appropriate.  And similarly,  I have a problem with the form of The Buried Giant. The essence of the book is of great interest to me, though. It is about memory of our past and in particular about memory preservation.

Kazuo Ishiguro, as per his own explanation, knows what his future book will be all about before he decides on the story setting. Sometimes it takes a long time to find a right setting. In case of The Buried Giant, it took some years and the book was published nine years after his previous one. He decided to place his story in King Arthur’s times. It is a fantasy with ogres, demons, dragons and real people as well. I had a problem with the story setting and this must have influenced my general impression on the book.

               

The main question the book asks of us, the readers, is: are we better off to have memories of the past events buried or remembered. We all have in our lives passages that were unfortunate and even harmful or painful. Do we want to live with the memory of them?  Or do we want to forget them. It we do not look at those painful memories that touched our lives, and they must have left a mark on us, aren’t we basing our current life on something phony? 

The memory question can be directed to individuals as well as and nations.

On individual basis one can ask a question: would our love to other people survive if we remember all the wrong doings? Is true forgiveness possible if we remember past hurts? The answer given on the last page of the book is – NO. Looking at my own life and some of its hurts I would have to, with some chagrin, agree with the book view. All hurts may be forgiven, some totally and some only to a certain level. Some of them once forgiven may allow us to go back to the old relationship but some even if forgiven change the fabric of the relationship forever and the good emotions cannot be rekindled.  This is how I understand the end of the book and the main character choosing to take the last boat passage without her husband. She does it with love for him, but she decides to do it on her own.

I think that Ishiguro writes books with depressing messages. The stories make you think, and the conclusions  ”uncover the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.

The same question of preserving memories or not applies to nations. Remembering the old harms leads to wars or prolonged partisan violence. There are too many examples of it in the recent years and in more distant history. Often, one would like to put the end to the remembrance, but in many situations, it seems impossible. So people hate each other and kill each other.

Ishiguro gives, in his interviews, example of the French history related to the World War II. Collaboration with Nazis was a hard memory to cope with. It was difficult after the war to consider France victorious remembering role of many Frenchmen being on the wrong side during the occupation of France. It was the deliberate politics of Charles de Gaulle to create propaganda focusing on heroes of anti-Hitler underground ignoring the other side of activities of the French population. This kept the spirit of the country up and helped in rebuilding the country after the war. I feel uncomfortable to quote this example as collaboration with Nazis was present in all of the occupied countries. In Poland as well. This is still being processed and often denied as the burden of such memories is too high to carry. Does the book offer a solution? No, it does not, but I do not think there is one. This is the matter of choice, strengths and courage of a person or a nation. I must admire Germans for their apology to the nations they hurt so badly. Sure, they did not have very much of an option, but still they were able to do it convincingly and with dignity.

I am sorry, that some Poles so strongly deny some events leading to loss of lives during the II World War. It did happen, but in exceptional situations and only minority of Poles were involved.  Strong denials of wrong doings make me feel very uncomfortable and ashamed.

I would say that The Buried Giant is a really good book stirring emotions and posing important existential questions.  

P.S. Writing the post and my comments about France and French resistance in the World War II, I felt uncomfortable even if I was repeating what I had heard. I know that France was criticised by some nations for not participating in the war strongly enough and early enough.  But a couple of days ago the world celebrated The Remembrance Day. This made me think that France had a very strong involvement then and paid great price losing too many of their young men. It was perhaps the country that suffered the biggest loses in this war. Some reluctance in starting another tragic chapter in the country history is fully understandable to me.