Unable to look away

Rather than returning immediately to Don Quixote, I picked up “Running with Scissors” by Augusten Burroughs as my next read.

I had read “Possible Side Effects” previously, and found it both funny and touching. The ride is much more intense in RwS. Suffering from insomina anyway, I couldn’t put the book down, and even when I tried to get to sleep once I felt sufficiently exhausted, I lay there thinking about it. In spite of the humor in Burroughs’ book, I was horrified at the situation this young boy was thrust into; and I was also amazed by just how crazy people can be (and how normal they can think themselves).

It was mesmerizing – the type of horrible fascination where you want to look away from something awful, but can’t stop yourself from watching – it felt the same as the time I was going through another insomia bout, watching some videos on YouTube; I thought I’d clicked on a picture of a video about some cute kittens, but instead, what came up were some cars in a brushy field with a man in a blue shirt taking photographs of something I couldn’t see – all of a sudden a lioness comes running up behind the man and takes him down – he fights, trying to block her, but she, of course, overpowers him. The video keeps rolling, and even as the man is struggling, the filmer pans back and shows the man’s wife and children in the car next to him, screaming and crying; and the man in the car on the other side starting to rush forward, but realizing that there’s nothing he can do and moving back again. As the camera turns back toward the lioness, the man is lying still, and she bites at him again – his body, perhaps in some nerve-response because he’s unconscious but not dead, jerks into a sitting position, then sinks backward again.

Even as I desperately wanted to stop watching it, I was unable to stop – I had nightmares for nearly a month after; and even years later, now, the images remain in my mind, and are still as disturbing as when they were fresh.

Reading RwS was disturbing in a similar way. Although it hasn’t caused nightmares, I can’t forget the callous selfishness of Burroughs’ mother; the cold anger and rejection of his father, and the genial predation of Dr. Finch.

Burroughs managed to survive, mauled but still alive – to come through with his humor intact, despite everything.

His book wounds like a lion.

Why didn’t I ever think of this?

I took a break half way through reading Don Quixote – not because I wasn’t enjoying it, either. I do tend to read multiple books at one time.

This past weekend, I read “How I Paid for College – A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater” by Marc Acito. It had been recommended to me by my friend David S., who, I believe, went to school with Marc (at any rate, he knows him). It’s been on my reading list for a while, and when I saw that his next book is out (“Attack of the Theater People”), I decided it was high time I read the first one.

I loved it! The characters are complex, experiencing problems that anyone might face, and, well, to say they approach solving them creatively is an understatement. In the same way that a movie such as “Arsenic and Old Lace” is a farce, yet deals with serious subjects (murder, madness, illegitimacy), so “How I Paid for College” is a farce, yet deals with sexuality, sex, depression, and, as the subtitle says, theft, friendship, and musical theater. However, there is a depth to the serious side of “College” that you don’t see in “Arsenic and Old Lace”. Perhaps because I found myself relating to the main character, Edward Zanni, in a way that I never related to Mortimer Brewster (I’m pretty sure I’m not the son of a seacook – or the daughter of one either. . .); I did have self-esteem problems when I was a teen-ager, I got involved in the high school theater group (techie, rather than acting), had some friends that I did crazy things with, and faced problems with a dysfunctional family.

I must say, I never considered extortion as a means to solve my problems, although murder occasionally crossed my mind.

As the situation goes from bad to worse, Edward and his friends escalate their efforts to find a way to pay for Edward’s tuition at Juilliard.  The potential consequences don’t faze the group, at least not much; and when the law catches up with them for a relatively minor offense, they all step up to spread the blame out, rather than let Edward take the rap.  Friendship does have its limits, however, and all of the friends are capable of rejecting sex with someone they’re not comfortable with (hetero and homosexual encounters alike) – no rape or pity fucks here.

Thinking back on the ending, it seems a little anti-climactic; but while I was reading it, it seemed very natural, and an appropriately ironic solution to the story.  I definitely recommend this book, and am looking forward to reading the sequel.

Madness, War, and Peace

Every person who meets Don Quixote during the first third of the book sees madness in Don Quixote, including Sancho Panza. And indeed, between tilting at windmills, seeing a barber’s basin as the Golden Helmet of Mambrino, and freeing galley slaves who were sentenced for crimes against the King’s justice (and who then turned around and beat both DQ and SP), the kindest words that can be used about him are that he has very poor judgment and little common sense.

Don Quixote recognizes no madness in himself, and so when he desires to bring even greater glory and fame upon himself by performing penance in the mountains, he determines that the way to do it is to imitate the greatest of chivalric knights in literature, “playing the part of one who is desperate, a fool, a madman;” and he bids Sancho not to advise him “to abandon so rare, so felicitous, so extraordinary an imitation.”

In essence, the episode of performing penance in the Sierra Morena is play-acting on the part of Don Quixote; under that same umbrella, his whole imitation of chivalrous knights and their lives and deeds is a type of play-acting, with Don Quixote trying to shape the world he lives in to be more like the Golden Age of Chivalry, which is delineated in so much detail in the romances he reads.

Is it madness that we try to shape our own worlds through our actions, either positive or negative? One person provides free legal services to poor people in an attempt to shape their world on his model of justice; another person becomes a suicide bomber to shape the world according to her beliefs. Each of these might perceive the others’ actions as madness, yet believe that their own actions are perfectly logical and sensible with the context of their world view.

At the inn where Don Quixote and his friends meet with the captive and the Lela Zoraida, DQ speaks to the assembled group, telling them that arms are superior to letters (i.e., being a knight or soldier is superior to being a priest or scholar). “The purpose and aim of letters . . . is to maintain distributive justice, and give each man what is his, and make certain that good laws are obeyed.” Whereas the purpose of arms “is peace, which is the greatest good that men can desire in this life. . . . This peace is the true purpose of war, and saying arms is the same as saying war.”

Cervantes describes DQ’s arguments in favor of arms and war as rational, “and no one listening to him at that moment could think of him as a madman”.

However, isn’t war just another way of trying to shape our world? If Don Quixote is mad to think that chivalry is an appropriate way to shape his world, isn’t he equally mad to think that war is an appropriate way to shape his world? Isn’t war just chivalry expanded to include a country or regime rather than just a single enemy knight?

The claim that peace is the purpose of war sounds mad to me.

Mixed Feelings

I’m loving “Don Quixote” – it is hilarious, interesting, romantic (OED: Romance – A tale in verse, embodying the adventures of some hero of chivalry, esp. of those of the great cycles of mediaeval ages, and belonging both in matter and form to the ages of knighthood; also, in later use, a prose tale of similar character).

Having studied medieval literature when I returned to school to get my degree (was it only 4 years ago that I graduated?), I have a particular fondness for this kind of story. The digressions and disquisitions that Cervantes throws in, if anything help keep the medieval flavor of the tale, with a more updated feel to the language (which is appropriate for a book written during the Renaissance).

Although Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are the official protagonists, we learn much more about the peripheral characters, their feelings, beliefs, and motivations. So far (roughly 1/3 in), the tale of DQ’s adventures seems more like a framework used by Cervantes on which to hang the stories of other characters than the point of the book itself. Time is very flexible – in a couple hundred pages, barely three days pass, but then in just a couple pages, three more days are blithely mentioned as having passed.

The mixed feelings come from the peripheral characters’ reaction to Don Quixote and his perceived madness. His friends laugh at him secretly, manipulate him through lies, and even strangers make fun of him by pretending to go along with his worldview and beliefs in order to see what sort of outrageous things he will say or do. On one level, I find the story amusing as DQ does say and do more and more outrageous things; but I also cringe when I read about his friends the priest and the barber telling him lies and laughing behind his back at how DQ believes the lies.

Madness is next up on the table – who is, who isn’t, what is it anyway? Perhaps that will be answered as I read further…

Welcome to my new blog

I spend a vast amount of free time reading, which won’t surprise those who know me; who know that I used to spend summer days sitting in a tree reading; and know that I went back to school to get my BA in Literature (and at the same time got sucked into getting an additional BA in History).

I read nearly anything, although particular favorites are fantasy novels, detective, horror, and thrillers, biographies, history, and anything by Terry Pratchett. Many people might feel that the point of reading is to educate oneself, and I certainly agree that this is a good thing to aim for; and I believe that a book doesn’t have to be a serious non-fiction book in order to learn something from it. Many people don’t understand why one would want to read anything that wasn’t true – what is the point of fiction, they wonder?

For me, I started reading when I was 3 years old – and for most of my early years and young adult life I read for escape – science fiction to start, and fantasy as it became a separate genre. Entertainment and escape continue to be prime motivators for my reading – I live all day in the real world, so it’s nice to go somewhere that is different and the problems the characters encounter are usually worse than the ones I live with.

I read “The Lord of the Rings” at least once per year, and “The Hobbit” gets its share of re-reads also.

While I was off work for my breast cancer surgery and treatment, I found that I was avoiding books with a lot of strife and serious subjects – as a matter of fact, I started re-reading the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett – even though Pratchett deals with serious matters, he does it in such a way that there’s lots of laughter involved (and for me, taking lessons to heart with a little bit of laughter makes them stick better). I’m starting to get back to my regular mix of “anything goes”, although I suspect that there’s still a tendency towards happier and/or funnier material.

Currently I just started reading “Don Quixote” by Cervantes (the Edith Grossman translation). I’ve read a children’s version long ago, and sang the songs along with the “Man of La Mancha” record my parents owned, and saw the Mr. Magoo version of the story. I have to say, the real book so far bears a lot of the same sense of silliness that the Mr. Magoo version held – but with a lot more bite. I’m enjoying it a lot, and suspect that, even though it is nearly 1000 pages long, it will be a quick read (I started this morning, and I’m 75 pages into it).

Of course, I rarely confine myself to reading one book at a time, but many times a second, third, or even fourth book will last for months as I read something (or several books) more immediately compelling.

I’m not sure what I will offer on this page – just a list of what I have read or am currently reading may be the start – I may comment on particular books or authors, but probably not full-blown reviews. I originally planned to do this on a separate page of my other blog, but discovered that I can’t post to sub-pages. So I started this blog, because books and reading are just that important!

Julie