You're face to face with the man who sold the world

I just got back from wandering around North Haven--Did you know EB games doesn't take DVDs anymore? What the hell, man. And Barnes and Noble e-mails that say there are sales are lies. LIES.

Anyway, I finished Doctor Zhivago too. I decided not to write about it for my school project, though it would be sublimely easy: You're supposed to write about how the main character changes. In the beginning, he's nine years old. In the end (spoiler!) he's dead. But! It was a pretty good book. Like I said, Pasternak is a very eloquent fellow, and can make even arbitrary things sound and seem quite majestic and beautiful.

One thing that always surprised me a little is how the underclasses are referred to as peasants, even into the 1930's. The word brings an image of Medieval beggars, and very easily it's my imagery to fault, but it's so strange that even in a 'modern' age they should still be known as peasants, and still living in villages that, to description, sound very much like Medieval villages. Odd.

"'Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction.'" Oh snap! Rome got served! I just picked this because Rome is considered the 'ideal' civilization and not only was it hit pretty hard on the head... well, look, that's actually a pretty good unromantic view of Rome. Really. And, I guess eloquence doesn't always mean beautiful. For the record.

"All the strong are dominated by the weak and ignoble."

Man, I can never read books about the military again. There's a long section where a general is trying to get his troops, you know, pumped by giving this long speech about how great the country is and how you must fight for it, even if you're your parents' only child. And all I could think of were lines from Catch-22 criticizing war, and patriotism. In Language and Comp we learned about logical fallacies--one of which was 'flag-waving' or using patriotism so your target group will agree with you. And, you know what? Not to belittle anything or offend anyone, but it is a logical fallacy. Really, it doesn't make any sense. "'What is a country?'" Huh, I wish I could include the whole quote, but it appears Wikiquote sucks. Just--just pay attention to the Sacrilegious Old Man when you get to him.

"'And about that deaf-mute, we're fed up hearing about him. Everybody goes on and on about the deaf-mute. And what have you got against him? Just that he was dumb all that time and then he suddenly started to talk and didn't ask your permission? As if that were so marvelous!'" I am not sure why I should favor so this passage.

"...an unshared happiness is not happiness..." I believe it was in Doctor Zhivago Christopher Johnson McCandless wrote this, and I guess it must have been around here. Maybe not, but I'd expect it to be in affirmation: "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED".

"Everyday life struggled on, by force of habit, limping and shuffling." There's something about that "by force of habit" I like. This bit works well on its own, and also if you continue the quote around the whole paragraph-- "Everyday life struggled on, by force of habit, limping and shuffling. But the doctor saw life as it was. It was clear to him that it was under sentence. He looked upon himself and his milieu as doomed. Ordeals were ahead, perhaps death. Their days were counted and running out before his eyes." I--I'm morid, a--aren't I?

"'It has something of Pushkin's uncompromising clarity and Tolstoy's unwavering faithfulness to the facts.'" Both Russian authors, obviously. I've never read Pushkin, but I find it kind of funny that Tolstoy should be described in such a way--War and Peace, at the time of its publication (I don't know if it still is, though, I only read reviews that were printed the same year of its publication) was criticized heavily for unfaithfulness to facts, and that Tolstoy was making up his own facts for "his conveniance" and the story's conveniance. A criticism that stands out is the fact that Napoleon randomly spoke Russian and then would go back to French. I mean, there was more, it was a long review, but that's the biggest point. I remember being like "Well, duh, it's a Russian novel..." but, you know. Maybe this is sarcasm here, but I don't know Pushkin, so I can't be sure.

"Near him, touching him, were hell, dissolution, corruption, death, and equally near him were the spring and Mary Magdalene and life. And it was time to awake. Time to wake up and get up. Time to arise, time for the resurrection."

"'Look at all these stations. The trees aren't cut, the fences are intact. And these markets! These women! Think how wonderful! Somewhere life is still going on, some people are happy. Not everyone is wretched. This justifies everything.'" Nothing is universal. Not everywhere is wretched, no matter how wretched one place may be. Vice versa, no matter how pleasant and wonderful one place is, there is a wretched and raggedy counterpart.

"But was this the way to win back lost love? For that you had to move mountains!" This was noted because of the fact that it reminded me of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Just the way the sentences are structured reminded me of each other--Because the interenet hates me, I shall paraphrase. "But even the X could not create a woman from clay. For that, you needed a rib." I like the sentence itself, but I like this one too, and paired together, I am quite enamored.

Okay, so background on the next one: Zhivago sees his love for the first time in quite a while, and they are quite unfamiliar to each other: "This was the only form of intimacy that still remained between them. And how distant, cold, and compellingly attractive was this women to whom he had sacrificed all he had, whom he had preferred to everything, and comparision with whom everything seemed to him worthless!" --->"Once you have loved someone this much
you doubt it could fade despite how much you'd like it too" (Fade Together, Franz Ferdinand) Well, for the record, they do suddenly fall back into each other's arms briefly. But I guess it's shocking, seeing someone so dear and beloved suddenly so distant. I hardly ever wonder about old friends in that manner, and I... I don't really have an old boyfriend to wonder that about. But. That commentary--it just grabbed me.

"'It isn't just that I don't love him--I despise him.' 'Can you know yourself as well as that? Human nature, and particularly woman's '"[HAHAHA!] "'is so mysterious and so full of contradictions. Perhaps there is something in your loathing that keeps you in subjection to him more than any man whom you love of your own free will, without compulsion.'" I am under the deepest belief that hate really is quite similar to love, a different type of love under a different name. Because really, say you have made an enemy of a classmate: you are constantly on the lookout for them, and when you see them, your heart skips a beat, you get excited and emotional. You react strongly upon seeing them. If the hate is deep enough, you are constantly talking about them, even if it's in ill terms--it is still constant. If it's deep enough, you are constantly thinking of them and such. And... oh man. I just totally lost my train of thought. Oh, damn. Well, my point was going to be--I think--that that's very similar to affection, right? And as lost as you are when you lose a significant other or some such, that's how someone losing an enemy must feel--why do you think people are so slow to apologize? They'd like to hold onto their object of hate, to the point of needing as desperately as a lonely person clings to love.

"'Just like something out of Jules Verne.'" Uh, so, how's about being my best friend? Any name-dropper of Jules Verne is a friend of mine!

All right, up next is the end, which is one of the most detached upsetting endings I've ever read:
"One day Larisa Feodorovna went out and did not come back. She must have been arrested in the street at that time. She vanished without a trace and probably died somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list that afterwards got mislaid, in one of the innumerable mixed or women's concentration camps in the north."

...

So, I skipped the poetry at the end. So it's possible I've missed some major messages or something deep, but I've never had it much for poetry. I just don't really understand it. I mean, sometimes things jump out at me, but most of the time I just don't have a head for it. I wouldn't know if it was any good or not had I been interested enough to read it, in any case.

Anyways, the book itself: It's an enjoyable book. I can't imagine carrying it around and it meaning as much to be me as it did to Christopher Johnson McCandless, but it's certainly a book I would be proud to have on my self. I'm not quite sure if it would go in my classics shelf (which technically doesn't even exist at the moment) but it would certainly have a place on my bookshelf.