What BOOK are you reading right now?

Hazlitt--

I thought the JCO story was frightening. Connie was so detached from her family, and so turned on by her own appearance, and the attention it provided her. I can see her motivations, and her thrall.

When I first read it, I was really irritated with JCO. I thought she'd pushed Connie unfairly into her demise-- but rethinking-- Connie's complete detachment made her so susceptible to the siren call. Its so compelling to 'step out' toward a strong call, when nothing is holding you back.

I had a young daughter at the time, and was changed a bit, due to the story.

I also analysed the symbolism-- like it wasn't really Arnold, but her complete submission to hedonism, materialism, fakery--her rejection of family--

What did you think?

Sofia, like you, I thought Where are you going?... was a well crafted terrifying story. I suppose it is a credit to JCO that she has given us a story that lends itself to so many questions and interpretations. I basically accept it as a straight forward story about a horrible attack on a young woman by a fiendish assailant. A cautionary tale, if you will.

Questions that I kept asking myself were these: Was Friend intended to be a Satanic figure, or perhaps Satan himself? What was the significance of the allusions to Elvis? Perhaps that the R&R culture is a corrupting influence? Is the mall as a hangout (place to live) a metaphor for corruption through materialism, and the presence there of Friend (Satan) at the mall a further intensification of, or indication of, the evil of consumerism? Is the whole episode in Connie's life just a dream or nightmare, as a few lines in the story suggest?

I don't know the answer to any of this, so I take the story for what it appears to be, but the fact that all these questions jump out at you as you read makes the reading all the more interesting.

I am often amazed at what writers can produce in the way of an intriguing multi-faceted story. This is a good example.

Oss, you are right to be bemused by McCarthy's assumption that she was hot stuff as an intellectual. She wasn't bad, but she was one of the lesser of the 30s group. For one thing, she was no match for her husband, Edmond Wilson; although, in another area of life, I sympathize with her in her personal struggles with that man.

Epsi -- Agree with you wholeheartedly about To the Finland Station. Read it first in college (and loved it, to my infinite surprise!); kept a copy with me thereafter. Just recently reread the middle section on Marx and Engels. It's brilliant, thorough, but most of all beautifully written. I used to know their son a little at Harvard, a very, very bright kid (no surprise) with interesting adventurous tastes. I think he teaches there now. They deserve credit for that joint venture. Also read McCarthy's Memories way back when and would need to reread it... She (and Hellman, god knows) both emerged badly from their spats, I thought.

Ann Coulter, like many too many others of her ilk (and there are many too many) value independent thinking only in themselves, to the extent they can credit themselves with it! We're intellectually, uh, what's that newspeak word... we're intellectually Challenged these days in the US. Differently abled? I wonder...

Tartarin, like so many ideological idiots, Ann Coulter would be a joke if it were not for all those whose gaping idiocy she feeds and encourages.

Wassup????????????
"The Agony and the Ecstacy" by Irving Stone

They used that stuff back then, Crazed?

Welcome, Crazed! I like your name!

Hello,
Right now I am re-reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...Anyway, Nowadays I am writing and studying to boot . I'll soon be starting another novel.
LOlz

I just finished "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali (one of the contenders for the Booker this year)

Avoid like plague !!

Thanks for the warning, Gautam.

Welcome Kompal and Crazed Mortal!

Haven't read much this summer but just finished "Skyward" by Mary Alice Monroe, the story of a fellow who runs a rescue center for birds of prey (also known as raptors) and of course enmeshed in a love story.

Just so into the study and love of animals, and this book about raptors taught me so much. Looking forward to reading 3 more by this author, same subject, same people.

Also just ordered East of Eden and True Grit, for some unknown reason except I don't recall the story of either.

Hazlitt, I highly recommend Ray Bradbury - especially if you like science fiction. His short stories and novella's are the best such as The Illustrated Man and the Martian Chronicles.

Gee, "Brick Lane" has gotten some reasonably positive reviews in the U.S. What was your beef, Gautam?

More like I've always shied away from being pushed into appreciating authors just because somebody else did. I picked up my first book at age three and Mom insists I've had one in my hand ever since...so I have definite (sometimes quite passionate) opinions about literature.



I read it in college, at least thirty times for that course, along with "The Dead" by James Joyce. The Prof's intent was to get her students to appreciate Joyce's influence on JCO's writing style. After a semester of being told how wonderful I would find these two authors I had no desire to read either one. The prof. insisted that "The Dead" was Joyce's best work and how could I possibly begin an essay with, "I didn't like it." (We kept a reader response journal for the course...a habit I haven't broken.) Several years later I was given a copy of Expensive People and read it in no time. I own a copy of Dubliners but have yet to open it. However, I finally realised that the reason I so disliked "The Dead" was that the main character was so real to me and not the type of person I would count among my friends.

What I did get out of the lesson was a fascination with one author's influence on another and more of a desire to learn about an author's motivation.

Keep the books! One's taste changes surprisingly over time. Opens up. Also closes down. The more you read, the more doors open. The ones which close down have been (for me) people who don't write interestingly, no matter how gripping the plot, or important the contemporary issue.

Anyone else have this experience?: When I go to a great movie, I AM the person in the movie as I walk out. Ditto when I read a great book: for days afterwards I think, write, talk like the writer.

Interesting that JCO is being discussed here, especially "Where Are You Going?" I just noticed the short story collection of that name has been republished (her early stories, I gather), and now I want to read it. I was a big fan of hers (Expensive People, Them, Garden of Earthly Delights) but eventually gave up: too much writing.

As for "The Dead"--it really got to me, as did a film version some years ago. Angelica Huston as the wife, if memory serves. Haunting, I'd call it. Read Dubliners for a modern lit course as a freshman, and it was one of the first times I realized that an author could be up to more than I'd thought before...

Agree with Tartarin about change of my pov with time should I reread some I thought I didn't like. Also, boredom with some I did, and variations thereof.

East of Eden, geez, I remember loving that.

Terry, I am not much into literary theory, but you raise an interesting question. As I understand it, reader response theory claims that the only meaning that a work of literature has is in the response of the reader. The text itself has no concrete meaning that can be discovered by all careful readers.

If the text is such an inscrutable and unknowable item, how much more inscrutable and unknowable must be the motivations of the author. My question is, if the text is here so that we may freely examine it, and yet it has no immutable meaning, how can we ever hope to uncover the least little thing about the inner thoughts and motivations of the author?

I am very much a subjectivist, myself, and probably would subscribe to some such theory as reader response if I were to think about it long enough, but the way you stated your last post brought this question to mind.

Say a word or two about your reader response journal.

BillW, I'm not sure why, but I've never gotten into science fiction or fantasy literature. I know they have much to offer, but they have never been my cup of tea.

What can you expect from someone who reads Trollope?

TS Eliot remarked once that he was often surprised (and I think irritated) by the meaning which was read into his work which was unintended. I'm often horrified by the extent to which we, living in and limited to our particular contemporary fishbowl, pronounce upon the nature of the water in the fishbowls of 1820 or 1940. The psyche of Jane Austen. What Eliot Really Meant. We do, at this time in this country, love to tell people what they really mean!

Sometimes it's nice, as when a pretty respectable art critic wrote a review of a show of my stuff and went on about all the depth of meanings, none of which I recognized but all of which I enjoyed.

We each bring something to the book; your Glencora may be quite different from mine...

Is the cow there? Are we egotistical enough to imagine that, if we can't see it from our vantage point, it most assuredly is NOT there? Are we capable, on the other hand of seeing cows in the distance which aren't there. (No, those distant pale blotches are limestone rocks on the hillside...)

I'm not a science fiction reader either, Hazlitt. Too mechanistic for me! But I did get into (and never completely out of) magic realism. I don't think it's in English yet (if ever) but Garcia Marquez' autobio came out last year in Colombia and Spain etc. and is a wonderful read -- beautifully written and of course about the intellectual formation of a magical realist. There are landscapes which cry out for that kind of imagination -- clearly Colombia has them and I know the center of Spain -- La Mancha -- is another.

Anyone here read Bachelard, Guy Davenport, Canetti? Or Schama's wonderful book, Landscape and Memory?

Tartarin, I generally approach a text with the idea that the author has said something and that I can, if I read carefully, can get the gist of what it's about. Always allowing for all the subjective pit-falls. These texts, novels and stories, are probably the best entry to the author's mind and motivations. Otherwise, we must rely on autobiographical material that is notoriously unreliable or on biography which is second hand. With biography, we have to try to understand the motivations of the writer, also. So where does it get you in the end? The only way to know someone is to marry them, and then you can't be sure.