The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

Woah, look, I live!  And rather than work on anything I should be doing, I'm here, writing about Ira Levin's novel The Stepford Wives, which I only recently discovered began life as a book.

And what is this book about, you may ask?  Well, its story sticks fairly closely to what I know happens in the film (which is pretty much just the stabbing scene--but of course that scene doesn't happen quite the same way in the book so probably the endings are different), but if you're unfamiliar about that too, the basic rundown is: nuclear family moves to Stepford (the film was actually shot in Connecticut, surprise surprise). All the ladies are weirdly perfect, they even stack their groceries in their shopping carts perfectly neatly, and they're trapped in like an "ideal fifties housewives Leave it to Beaver loop"--in fact, they have no outside interests other than cleaning and caring for the kids.  Slowly, over the course of the novel, our protagonist's friends who also recently moved in become bubbleheads as well, and the things they took interest in are even destroyed.  For example, a very outgoing friend named Carmelia becomes a bubblehead and the next day her super expensive clay court is getting ripped up.  Our protagonist forms a hypothesis that the men are turning their wives into robots.

That's right, robots!  And spoiler alert for those who don't know the story or film I'm giving you a ton of warning before I tell you: they are.  In the film, the scene I've seen, our protagonist stabs a wife, and without missing a blink she turns around and says something like, "That was rude" and goes on, clearly not bleeding or dying.  They introduce the foreshadowing to this about a third on; there's a character--a husband--nicknamed Diz.  First of all, I immediately thought of the Disney, uh, "empire", because there's a character in Kingdom Hearts II named Diz.  Of course, Diz reveals that he was called that because he worked at Disney, and they don't reveal it until later where he worked at Disney, but I immediately went "it's the hall of presidents, he worked in the hall of presidents", which, of course, is the truth.
And of course this totally took me out of the mood, I cracked up.  But to be fair, Disney probably had the most advanced public robotics program in 1972, and if all the men were from NASA or something--first of all the message would be different (invariably more sinister), and the men wouldn't be allowed to continue with their business unchecked.  Disney is, believe it or not, the most believable explanation, under analysis, for these going-ons in Stepford.

I didn't mark a lot of notes in the book, but I have a couple of recollections which of course will have no specific page numbers.  Sorry.  (But it's super short so like, just read it.)  But, Ira Levin also wrote Rosemary's Baby, which I'll talk a little bit more about later, because knowing that kind of casts a new light on that film/book (I've just started the book, actually.  But I saw the movie a few years ago, so what I'm saying could still be a little accurate!).  But one thing that drives me nuts about both works is that--well, our protagonist in this book has some spunk, she seems like a more outgoing character to me.  And I guess at the very end, Rosemary is ready to stab her baby, so that's pretty hardcore too.  But what drives me nuts about both of them is that while they're trying to be subversive and rebellious, they're still kind of complying: "Hey Rosemary, drink this weird drink that's like bird poop for your kid.  Don't read baby books.  Cool"--with this book, long after our protagonist (who is named Joanna, by the way) suspects robots are a thing, she still agrees to a recording session thing.  This is literally her saying every word in the dictionary.  You know: "Tax.  Taxation. Taxed. Taxing", etc.  Wow, can't see how that might be related to the robot thing, especially after her friend who just got turned into a robot described that exact scenario right before she got transformed.  I'm just saying.

The friend who got changed right before her had kids.  She actually takes the younger son aside and asks him about it.  Though he notes and is somewhat confused by the change, what he says implies that he's okay with it, and in fact prefers the situation with his mother now, even if it's odd for her (the kids are not aware of the process),  This makes me wonder what will happen to the kids, though.  Even boys can go through some pretty wild rebellious phases, and with complacent robo-moms?  It's going to really suck for their dads.  And the obvious question would be what about the girls--early on we meet a sixteen-year-old daughter who leaves messes and whatnot, but we never see her again, and she's a pretty flat character.  There's a sequel--film only, I believe--called "The Stepford Children", but this leaves a pretty big hole, to me at least.  This is the main thing that bothers me in the whole story, because you can't really rationalize that area, like with the Disney thing.


So--Rosemary's Baby, yes?  Taking it with Rosemary's Baby, I'd say we can take it with feminist theory.  Stepford Wives, the danger of being stuck in a role and silenced.  Obviously these women are replaced by complacent robots, but... Rosemary's Baby, I would see that as a continuation of this, perhaps rather than being silenced, being too complacent in a traditional role, and clearly suffering for it.  (By the way, between the time I started this post and the time I ended it, I finished that book too--the end of the film is much more effective.  The end of the book is too wordy, though it comes to the same result.)  We could blame her accepting the baby as just totally melting into the role completely, assuring that she'll remain trapped (and if we take it at face value, be impressed that a mother-baby connection could overcome the whole Antichrist thing).  I don't know much about Ira Levin's other books or life, but I'd say his novels are definitely indicative of the times and can be taken as feminist by acting as a warning to not be complacent and submissive--or... I guess even a warning for the other is possible--you know, "don't be outspoken or we will crush you with fifties values and also Satan, who hates independent women too".  



So.  The book was all right.  Not bad, the concept is frightening, if not as "real" for someone in my particular station in life (but I certainly can understand it), but it's too... seventies, almost?  There's something about certain books written in the seventies that have their own certain flavor that's almost... dreamy.  It feels out of touch the way a dream kind of can be.  It's certainly much more frank than modern books.  I definitely liked Rosemary's Baby more, but this wasn't bad either.  I'm definitely looking forward to watching the film now, in any case.
(And sorry if this post is a little disjointed or more out of touch than usual!  If you look at the dates, you wouldn't be surprised if I told you I was rusty... Right?)

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Woah, weird how I haven't died.  Nope, I'm still around, I've just been super busy with school.  Even over my break I was really busy with schoolwork!  That's no good.

Hm... life updates?  Well, I got a Kindle Fire, so that's pretty sweet.  I started reading The Tale of Genji but it's incredibly boring and super repetitive.  Summary: Genji wants to get it.  He does 95% of the time.  Has an illegitimate child.  Worries if anyone will figure it out, but still gets with every woman he possibly can.  There.  I just saved you from 700 miserable pages (I only made it to 216).  Oh, also there's one part where he kidnaps an underage girl because she looks like this other lady who died or turned him down or something so, you know, that's cool too.

Anyways, I wasn't feeling Steppenwolf too much either.  It's funny how Demian had such a gigantic impact on me and Hesse's other books for me are always just kind of like, "eh".  (Oh, and before I explain the plot--yes, the band Steppenwolf is named after this book.  They were the Peace Doves or something silly like that originally, but the story goes that Jim Morrison [of The Doors] suggested they name themselves after this book instead.  And they did, obviously.)
So, the book starts out with the pretense that the whole thing is a manuscript written by Harry, the titular Steppenwolf, a wolf of the steppes--that is, he was kind of living the hermit life in the wild.  And he's slowly becoming reacquainted to society, there are some intense psychological struggles... He wants to kill himself for a long time because he's in his fifties and he's just starting to feel the real aches and pangs of his old age and he thinks it would be better to just end it--actually, in the intro, Hesse said this book appealed particularly to younger (like 14-22, I assume) readers because of this idea, which means they missed the point.  And he meets this woman, Hermine (who looks like a childhood friend named Herman, hm.  Oh, and pair that with the fact that the main character in Demian begins an affair with Demian's mother and she is described as looking like her son.  Someone find me a good queer theory essay on Hesse!  I want it.  I need it.  Now.) who teaches him to dance and enjoy music (jazz) and modern things and romance and sex and even cocaine because it's the twenties.  The book ends with a huge scene in the "magic theater" where films become real with observers becoming players and people they know as others figments in the scenes... But it falls flat and the fantasy is confusing and just kind of out of place.  It's supposed to be mystical I'm sure, but it feels kind of like it came out of left field and is almost too strong, too late.  I could accept some of the mysticism in, say,  Journey to the East, as the whole book permeates that kind of mysticism... But not here.

  Honestly, in the beginning there wasn't much I liked.  Just a few quotes here and there.

So, there is the idea of course that every man has good and evil in him, an angel and a devil.  I think we can agree on that.  Or that many people have ideas of who/what they are, like a persona.  And they want to stick to that no matter what, which is why, sometimes, people can be resistant or hide new interests or new ways of thought or what have you (in my experience).  The best example I can think of is that post that went around Tumblr for a while--you know, some days I want to dress like a princess but other days I want to wear red lipstick and be a rad biker chick (or something like that).  People who hadn't realized yet that you don't have to be married to a persona loved that.  But people past that point just kind of said, "There's no reason why you can't do that.  Do that."  I personally think it's a pretty important step in growing up to realize that you don't have to married to that idea you've got in your head about that... So... Anyways... the Steppenwolf has the idea that he is just animal and man, refusing to admit, perhaps, that there's a lover in him, there's a tender side, etc: "The Steppenwolf, too, believes that he bears two souls (wolf and man) in his breast and even so finds his breast disagreeably cramped because of them.  The breast and body are indeed one, but the souls that dwell in it are not two, nor five, but countless in number.  Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads" (Hesse 73).  Hesse goes on in a bit that's not really worth typing all out that although the Steppenwolf feels as though these two souls are too many, the real problem is that they are really too few.
Also, if you need help with Hesse's quote, try the later Shrek version:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZhAhuknUho.  I'm sorry, Hesse legitimately said men were onions.  You're lying to me if your first thought wasn't of Shrek either.

"That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as it is desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a very short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow--all this the Steppenwolf, too, suspected" (Hesse 75).

"The wolf, too, has his abysses.  The wolf, too, suffers... Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity.  Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in the wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as a man who sings: 'If I could be a child once more!'  He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering.  There is, in fact, no way back to the wolf or the child" (Hesse 77).  
Anyways.  Don't think I mentioned.  I like these quotes because, as I'm sure I've mentioned a million times by now, I love deconstructionism.  Also, rose-tinting that occurs makes me really uncomfortable, especially on the level that Hesse is talking about.  (The wolf or child he refers to would of course be that idealized one-dimensional picture we have in our heads of the wolf or the child.)

"'God is good and has the span of all our days in his hands and that of every waltz and fox-trot too'" (Hesse 157).

Honestly... I don't have much to say about this book other than that.  There were parts that really excited me, but a lot of it was pretty flat, or just confusing.  Like I said, the end has this weird mystic feel that totally breaks away from the drab realism that permeates all but one other scene of the book (and even that's not really "mystical", it's just that Harry is so fascinated by Hermine in drag that it seems that way).  The end would be cool in a book that gave hints that this strange world existed in some way, but it doesn't--so when people start shrinking into chess pieces and being given physical representations of their personalities and are suddenly immersed in the middle of the great war between man and machine with a childhood friend they haven't seen in over a decade--the reader just kind of steps back.  The chess bit came first so I was kind of thinking, okay, this is kind of cool... but then all the weird stuff builds to a crescendo, and as it's building I just want to leave because it's just too much with not even the slightest hint.
Oh, and I was also disappointed by the bit of chess pieces as personality--I took it to mean, until that point on page 223, that it meant, like... Well, I don't know.  There's a part of you that's a goody two-shoes, but you can be tough too.  You can be a singer, an artist, an athlete, all at once, someone who is passionate about silent movies while only liking, say, Kanye West.  It's possible to be all those different kinds of people.  Or like how you act differently around friends, your parents, professors, etc.  That's how I have described it above, too.  But on page 223, the character who gives Harry the pieces says that modern science has diagnosed people who try to live their multi-personalitied lives as schizophrenics.  Though having multiple facets of self can mean what I described or schizophrenic--the two things are very different, and it disappointed me that that sort of thing was what Hesse meant all along.  


Hm... I really don't have much else to say.  I guess I'm out of practice... (Sorry.)  I wouldn't read this book again if--well, if you paid me I definitely would.  ...But, on my Kindle I downloaded a lot of books we were forced to read in high school that I hated with a fiery passion to see if I still hate them.  (Actually, I really liked A Streetcar Named Desire, I just hated my teacher).  Early prediction: I'm still going to.  That darn American lit.  Oh well.  I'm even going to try some of F Scott Fitzgerald's other work, so that's cool (I'll probably still hate The Great Gatsby).  Anyways, I'll see you guys around!  Sorry that this post was so lame!

Works Cited: Hesse, Hermann.  Steppenwolf.  Penguin: London, 2001.

Gerald's Game by Stephen King

So, I finally found a copy of Gerald's Game!  Like Dolores Claiborne, it's very different from his other books--it's much more alarming and serious in some parts, realistically creepy (think Ed Gein) at others, and 2 spooky in quite a few.
Like I mentioned a couple of posts ago, this book is about the girl that Dolores sees during the eclipse, and thinks later (at Vera's death) that the girl is in trouble.  Similarly to the book, as Selena was molested, Jessie, the main character, was not molested--but there was a sexual run-in that she describes as a "scratch" more than anything else.  It was bad but not the worst, but still, that's like saying a bullet to the appendix isn't as bad as to the head--it will probably still kill you or mess you up pretty badly.
Anyways, the connections to the other book pretty much end there.  Jessie mentions that her visions of Dolores are like a radio picking up a signal (King 167), but... That's about it.  Nothing major about it.  It's almost disappointing even, because Jessie describes Dolores which sort of ruined my image of her.


So!  Anyways.  The book starts out with the "terrible trouble" Dolores senses on the day Vera dies.  Jessie and her husband, Gerald, are at their summer home for an autumn weekend.  The only way Gerald can get excited lately is by handcuffing Jessie to the bed.  Jessie balks this time (later she claims it's because of the spit on her husband's chin reminds her of a certain bit of cum, but we'll get there--it might be added that she asks her husband to stop and he willfully ignores her and indeed continues crawling up on her) and eventually kicks her husband off the bed when he refuses to unhook her.  He then has a major heart attack and she is left chained up to the bed.

First, the book starts with the same "path of the eclipse" map as in Dolores Claiborne--duh!  But I was still surprised to see it.

Jessie faints after Gerald falls to the floor and clearly dies.  Anyways, my next note doesn't have to do with the book specifically--just this edition.  Someone stuck a temporary butterfly tattoo in the page break before where chapter two starts.  It's pretty shocking, and kind of eerie considering there is a painting (or some kind of wall art) in the bedroom of a butterfly described later on.

Like Dolores, Jessie hears voices in her head--but not Vera, as clear as she's next to her speaking--it's her roommate from college, Ruth.  She also hears a voice she has always heard that she refers to as the "goodwife" and a voice she associates with her young self, though it's not quite her, I don't think, it only looks like her in her visions.

Oh, and a stray dog gets into the house--the front door wasn't shut all the way--and begins to eat Gerald's corpse.  The dog is kind of major in the book until she imagines a man/ghost that she names the "Space Cowboy" (yes, like the Steve Miller Band song)--actually, there seem to be some weird hints (or weird hints I thought I'd saw) until the end that the dog and Jessie are in for some weird Disney happily-ever-after ending--like, the dog was, for a while, the pet of a young girl, but her father didn't feel like paying for its license.  Stephen King describes a couple of times how it played fetch with the young girl.  So, when Jessie drops the little jar of Vaseline, I thought, you know, that the dog would instinctively grab it and bring it back despite everything and she'd use it and they'd go skipping off into the sunset.  Or at the end, I thought it would protect Jessie from the Space Cowboy, despite being terrified of him... And then they'd drive off together in Jessie's car, happy as clams, happily ever after.  You know.  Just like how Stephen King usually does things.

When Jessie first imagines she can see her younger self (in stocks), she refers to herself as a "daughter of Eve" (King 71).  Again, I suppose it's not that weird of a way to refer to a female, but, a little Chronicles of Narnia much?  Peculiar.

Ruth's voice tells Jessie that "us high-riding bitches have to stick together" (King 99)--if you'll recall, one of Vera and Dolores's favourite little phrases.
Anyways, a major point in the book is Jessie admitting to herself and coming to terms with what happened that night of the eclipse--the real-life Ruth knew something bad happened to Jessie at some point, but Jessie never said it all and when Ruth started asking about it, Jessie moved out.  So, with nothing really much else to do, she begins remembering.
A horrible nightmare comes first, she's playing croquet, the sun goes out, she's naked--and Gerald approaches her, but he open his mouth and the dog 's head pokes out, and then the dog's head opens and out appears his father's head (or vice versa, I can't seem to find the exact page.)  I'm... not really sure how to approach that one, but it's worth pointing out for its similarities to the can tahs (taks?) in Desperation (the can tahs in The Dark Tower are a little different).  The can tahs are these stone carvings of animals, some of whom have open mouths with tongues that are a different animal and such--they cause intensified sexual and violent reactions in those who touch them (for the most part), eventually driving you insane if you're in contact with them for too long.  Can tahs are referred to as "little gods" in King's Desperation, can taks are "big gods"--I guess if they've been more or less controlling Jessie's behaviour and dictating a lot of her life, this weird, Freudian demon would be an acceptable "big"/"little god".

Sooo as for the eclipse itself, the family was going to a woman in the area's home to view it (might I add that Jessie's family had a summer home too).  Jessie decides she wants to spend the day alone with her father--and her father agrees to that.  In convincing his wife to allow that, they get into a huge fight--his wife accuses him of acting as though Jessie is more like his girlfriend than daughter.  ...Well, foreshadowing alert...
What follows next is honestly one of the most disturbing things (in my opinion) that Stephen King has ever written.  She sits in her father's lap to watch the eclipse--she's about twelve at the time, by the way, developed a little--but she sits in her lap, thinking nothing of it, even though it is "strangely full of angles this afternoon" (King 152).  She wiggles around, trying to get comfortable and he does not push her off--he gasps, but says nothing, tells her he's fine and shifts a little on his own.  What a scum.
He does not... eh, put it in, but he comes on the back of her panties.  Jessie runs in to wash it (her father sends her in rather than apologizing or anything right away).
He eventually comes up after her.  He apologizes, tells her she can never tell anyone, and--UGH!  In Dolores Claiborne, Joe tells Selena that a wife has certain duties, a man has certain needs, and Dolores was just not doing any of it.  Also she hit him in the face with the creamer.  Surprise surprise, Jessie's father says the same thing--and at first says he must tell his wife.  Jessie is terribly ashamed (but lucid enough to know that she shouldn't be feeling bad like that, her father should be) and begs him not to--she believes that her mother will say it's her (Jessie's) fault.  I could punch Jessie's father for his reaction to this fear: "'Oh no--I don't think so,' Tom said, but his tone was surprised, considering... and to Jessie, as dreadful as a death sentence.  'No-ooo... I'm sure--well, fairly sure--that she...'" (King 182).  What an awful, manipulative bastard.  He saw his angle and moved right in on it.  And he uses scare tactics to keep her mouth shut.  What a scumbag.  He tells her that her way is best, too, so if she should have to keep quiet about it, if it should torment her--well, it was her choice.  Her own fault.  That was what she chose and wanted.  What a dick.
I seem to have lost another note regarding something in this situation--she notices, when reliving the memory, that when her father says he loves her and he's sorry when it's all through, he looks away--she becomes enraged because the whole time, as he lied to her and terrorized her, he looked her right in the eye, but he couldn't look her in the eye to tell the truth.  I thought it was the other way when I read it though--he was scaring her on purpose, and then when he apologizes he looks away because he's not really sorry--not about that itself at least, he got his rocks off.  This is because it's supposedly common knowledge that liars will look away from you when they lie unless if they're really good at it.  Maybe he feels bad because of possible repercussions, but not that he did what he did.  He undoubtedly rationalized it by saying to himself, well, at least I didn't go all the way... And, as Ruth's voice points out, he probably planned it.  He does feel Jessie's breasts a couple of times before he comes.  And I can't help but notice that he didn't exactly kick Jessie off his lap to go and take a cold shower or anything.

I guess I haven't really talked about the space cowboy yet, have I?  Jessie sees him in what seems to be a dream, a Nosferatu-esque figure with a house doctor's old timey clutch bag made from human parts and filled with jewels.  It's hard to tell if he's real or not, even at the end, though he leaves behind a muddy footprint and a pearl earring the first night.  But who knows, it's Stephen King.  It feels a little awkward and tacked on, and overall, 2 spooky.  Like, okay.  I don't now how many of you readers watch Nostalgia Critic, but a while ago he did Lilo and Stitch, and he said the relationship of the sisters is so good... But then there's Stitch.  Does it have to be there?  It kind of gets in the way of that already pretty powerful story.  Same here.  The Space Cowboy, for me, is the Stitch of this.  I'm not sure if he needed to be here as a physical being.
Anyways, she gets out, she starts running because he's at the door--but then when she turns around before she gets to the car he's not there.  Was it all in her head?  I don't know.  This is 2 spooky 4 me.

The book ends with Jessie writing a letter to her old friend Ruth--telling her every single thing that happened, including what she couldn't tell the cops.  It's weird, and awkward, but it is kind of interesting.  Turns out her space cowboy was an escaped serial killer--that's right, despite every awkward plot device and detail, he was real--named Raymond Andrew Joubert.  Excuse me while I sigh forever and roll my eyes.  I'd be lying if I didn't find this grossly interesting, the way someone might be reading about Ed Gein, but it just seems so awkward here.  It doesn't need to be.  I don't know how it could have ended without this afterward, but it's just so... Why?  Why bother, there doesn't need to be this.  Just make him some kind of mind-phantom visiting from the Dark Tower books or something.  I don't know.
A story about Joubert would be its own interesting story--except that history has already done that.  May I introduce you to Wikipedia.  Interesting, even if it is 2 spooky and plays on some kind of cliche stuff.  For example, some of the reasons why Jessie wasn't sure if he was real or not is because he appears to be very, eh, Nosferatu-like.  Oh hey, turns out he has a genetic disorder!  He really does look like that.  And again, the serial killer angle is interesting... but hey, here's Wikipedia, you'll get the same kind of story there.  Things are interesting, but I guess maybe you could say it isn't as equipped to survive in this time.  I don't know.  But I'm not in love with that awkward "This is how it happened" stuff--especially so late in the book.

She even confronts Joubert--he was captured and put on trial for something else--and I guess that confrontation has its own kind-of power.  She yells at him, in one of her nightmarish reality-dreams that he's nothing but moonlight--when Joubert notices her he slowly raises his arms next to his head (like he was chained up) and repeats her words--"'I don't think you're anyone!... You're only made of moonlight!'" (King 329).  Actually, this scene felt the most real to me, of the whole book.  For some reason it was very easy to imagine Joubert's voice as King described it, and it is alarming.

Oh,. and there is a reference to Needful Things--Jessie mentions how there was a "big fire in Castle Rock about a year ago--it burned most of the downtown" (King 316-317).  I'm pretty sure she mentions Alan Pangborn by name (last name only) as well, but I can't seem to actually find it.  Well, either way, Alan Pangborn is the one who pretty much defeats or chases away Leland Gaunt in Needful Things.


My last note isn't so much a note on the book... didn't really have a place up there I guess, but I think I mentioned how although Jessie is chained and topless, she still has panties on.  She does eventually pee herself, but for the first 24 hours or so, she is in dry panties.  I feel like King did this not so much because Gerald didn't get to it yet--but because it was just too undignified (for her) to leave her completely nude and unprotected.  I don't know.  That's how it seemed to me, anyways.


So, overall?  The book has its moments.  In some ways it is one of King's most powerful books, in others it falls way short of the mark.  It wasn't bad to read, but I doubt I'll ever pick this one up again--or if I do, I'll only read up to Jessie's epilogue in letters--or just that part.  It's an okay sister to Dolores Claiborne, but pretending up a reason for Dolores's visions ended up doing the same amount of satisfying as this book--heck, Jessie never even addresses that after, when she is in the right frame of mind.  That seems especially odd, that that's not even wondered about.  I guess in comparison to everything else it's not that important, but...

Oh well.  Onto the next thing when we can, I'm heading back to school soon so there probably won't be anything for a while--but see you whenever!



Works Cited:  King, Stephen.  Gerald's Game.  Viking: United States of America, 1992.  

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

What's up!  I just finished the 736-page-long Russian novel Anna Karenina.  Like many other Russian novels, it is long and dark, unlike many others, it surprisingly wasn't that confusing, beyond keeping the names straight.  And I didn't even see the movie first!  How was it?  Did it actually win any Oscars?  I watched the Oscars but I wasn't really paying attention to that category.  (Probably best adaptation or something, right?)

Anyways, this book, as one would expect, is mainly about Anna Karenin, though it starts off without her and the book ends without her, seemingly randomly focusing on a different character.  The ending is interesting and it's powerful--but it almost feels like that this isn't the book it belongs in.  On the other hand, like many Russian novels, this feels like it could go on forever.  I don't necessarily mean it in a bad way, but it's like... life.  Like there's no ending till you die, multiple "rising action" points, climaxes, whatever, then things bumble along, and of course so many lives intersect in this book.


Anyways, the book starts out with an upset woman named Darya (I'm going to stick to first names only when possible)--her husband was unfaithful to her with their English governess (strangely enough, all the governesses in this book seem to be English and most of them are portrayed as being silly, foolish, or just generally not very good at their job).  Oh, and of course there is the famous opening: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" (Tolstoy 3).  So of course, as one can imagine, we're going to see many, many unhappy families in the course of the book, and how they're all different.
Stepan ("Stiva") is ashamed and penitent, but he can't bring himself to talk to his wife, fearing she'll ask for a divorce.  Stiva, although you want to dislike him in the beginning and you still kind of do, grew on me pretty quickly with his views on liberalism, and why he likes it: "The liberal party said that in Russia, everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money.  The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan... little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature.  The liberal party... allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan... could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up... And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan['s]..." (Tolstoy 8-9).  So you can't help but roll your eyes in amusement at him a little bit.

So my next note is about the end of 49-50--no, Anna has not appeared yet, but a very important fellow to mostly everybody's unhappiness has appeared; Vronsky.  He'll become important in a while.  For now, my note is mainly just an aside--the book was printed from 1873-1877 in magazines, and I imagine that it's set in about the same time.  Spiritualism had become very popular in the US about this time (Lincoln's wife is credited with a lot of this influence much of the time) and apparently the same is true is Russia.  Stepan objects because it seems like a fraud to him, Vronsky insists they try "table-turning" (Tolstoy 50).  It's more or less an old school Ouija board--everyone puts their hands on the table and hopes it turns.  I guess.  Oh, and no letters.  So actually, it's more like an eleven-year-old girl's slumber party, when everyone tries to pick up one of their friends with the tips of their fingers.

Anna's first major appearance in the novel doesn't come till page 64--she visits Darya to persuade her against splitting with Stepan.  Her advice is fluff, and even without knowing where it would go next (though being fully capable of guessing based on this) it seemed kind of like nothingness.  She just basically says, you and your children are sacred to him even if he was unfaithful--this was not an "'infidelity of the heart'" (Tolstoy 65), just his loins.  I don't think I would have bought it.  In retrospect, it is also ironic because--surprise--the Karenin family becomes unhappy because Anna ends up cheating on her husband.  And while she still regards her son with her husband as divine, she barely makes any effort to honour him and forgets about him a lot and becomes creepily obsessed with her new beau.  And she deliberately spits in her husband's face when he attempts to allow the affair to happen (because he senses there's simply nothing he can do) and finally part so that she can continue unhindered.  I'm getting ahead of myself, but urgh!  Anna drives me nuts.  When she helps her sister-in-law it seems like fluff, but you get the idea that she's sophisticated, knowledgeable, etc, and very quickly that view back flips about nine thousand times.  Anyways--Stepan and his wife do not get divorced... And Anna's happy fluff does nothing, unsurprisingly meant nothing.  On page 110 you discover that Stepan wasn't to be trusted, he still is never home, money's going... All the usual signs that something's up, and that there's real no question of what the "something" could be.

So we run into Darya's youngest sister on page 70--Kitty, looking for a beau, and actually having attained Vronsky from the table-turning scene has him.  It seems pretty obvious that they're going to be wed... She even refuses her other suitor, Levin, for him.  Unfortunately, Vronsky is bewitched by Anna at a ball, and vice versa.  So Kitty falls into such a despair she almost dies, and there is one more unhappy family, and of course there is Anna's own family, her husband and son, who also suffer.  At first she was frightened of her feelings, thinking when I get back home, I'll see my son and my husband again, and that'll be great, everything will be normal again--she immediately notices how "gross" her husband is and it goes down pretty quickly from there (as quickly as possible in a 700+ page novel).  She's even a little disappointed when she sees her beloved son, but I think in his case it's because he's an undeniable symbol that she's kind of stuck where she is tight.  Vronsky also gets agitated when he first meets Alexey (Anna's husband) because "He could recognize in no one but himself an indubitable right to lover her" (Tolstoy 95), assures himself that he doesn't love her, and yeah.  Makes sense that he wouldn't like Alexey but looking back on it I just want to grab him and kick him in the butt out of there going "Leave them alone!!"

My next note is page 103--mainly just about Vronsky's outlook on life.  I don't think they ever specifically say, but I came to believe that Vronsky was at least a couple of years younger than Anna.  So he's living in a time of blooming dandies (remember, at this point Oscar Wilde was currently overspending at Oxford), and he's young.  He's from St Petersburg and in "his" Petersburg there's a lower and upper class:  lower being "vulgar, stupid, and above all, ridiculous... who believe[d] that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married... a woman modest... that [a man] ought to bring up one's own children" (Tolstoy 103).  The other being his class, the "real" people (Tolstoy 103)--so he's kind of scum right from the beginning.  I guess you can't fault anybody for fooling around, but walking out on a kid, cheating on a spouse, willingly leading someone away from a family (Vronsky is completely unbothered and I don't think he even spares a thought for Anna's son)--Vronsky is the same old, ancient story of having fun and willfully ignoring any sense of personal responsibility.  He gets his as Anna starts losing it, but weirdly I started sympathizing with him at that point.  But now, thinking about it--yeah, he got what he deserved with all of that.
Vronsky, like Stepan earlier, bemoans his positions which forces him to lie and deceive--so against his nature.  Of course, this pushes the blame off himself.  He isn't bad, just the situation.  Unfortunately for him, in this situation, I'm not buying it, especially since he convinces himself that finally now Anna is happy (she was more than happy before she ever ran into him, mind you).  Oh boy, thanks for making that possible.  And admittedly, in the middle of a long inner "monologue" on page 167, it is revealed that Vronsky "felt that the love that bound him to Anna was not a momentary impulse, which would pass" (Tolstoy 167).  Maybe not--but eventually Anna's overbearing jealousy did chase him away.  They're both equally at fault, I guess, but their position just agitates me so!  Anna is so hardheaded though, that it's hard for me to not dislike her more, even while knowing Vronsky isn't the greatest guy either.

Going back to Kitty, the doctors prescribe her "Soden waters" for her sickness (Tolstoy 108) because they don't know what to do for her, but the waters were "a remedy obviously prescribed primarily on the ground that they could do no harm" (Tolstoy 108).  Soden waters are apparently waters imported from special springs in Bad Soden, Germany.  The waters have high mineral content and whatnot which may or may not give them special mending properties.

Ah, and this is more a note to myself, but I'd love to see a queer theory reading of Kitty and her friend Varenka.  Kitty meets her in the midst of her slump and she begins to admire her and love her greatly.  She kind of gets out of her slump too--what better way to get away from a broken heart than for someone to mend it?  For some reason the small interlude seems to have homoerotic tones to it... If anyone who reads this could point me towards such an essay or dissection, please point me towards it with a link or something!  I'd appreciate it.

Tolstoy also briefly smears romanticists: Levin, the fellow who was turned down by Kitty for Vronsky lives in a country, works the land.  His brother, not so much.  "To Konstantin Levin the country was good first because it afforded a field for labor, of the usefulness there could be no doubt.  To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good, because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing" (Tolstoy 217).  Shhh, pastorals.  Shhh.  I love it when romanticists get made into fools in books... The best is in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, which addresses how realistically someone could adapt to such a life.  (Answer: not well, not easily.  At all.)

"'It's hard to love a woman and do anything'" (Tolstoy 284).  This is just a bit of one of Vronsky's friend's attempt at trying to convince Vronsky away from Anna (or any married woman).  I just kind of liked that bit.

Anyways.  As I kind of mentioned, Alexey has no power over his wife--he allows the affair, only if she meets Vronsky away from the house... Which, of course, she breaks without a second thought.  Anyways--the conversation they have that very night which marks Alexey finally displacing his wife for good marks the first real bad spot in their relationship.  Anna starts showing her weird jealous side--though she claims she isn't, a bit.  "'I'm not jealous: I believe you when you're here; but when you're away somewhere leading your life...'" (Tolstoy 328).  So, yeah, she is.  Anyways, it starts when Vronsky is complaining of a certain man who cares for nothing but "animal pleasures"--to which she responds "'But don't you care at all for these animal pleasures?'" (Tolstoy 328).  I thought it was about to get a little sexy, was about to applaud Tolstoy for unbuttoning the top button--but no, it's not sexy times--at least not for them.  And it's not out of the question, I'm pretty sure at this point she's--surprise cause I'm pretty sure condoms didn't exist then--pregnant with Vronsky's daughter.  (Later a sickness deems her infertile and you can feel Vronsky's heart sinking when she does coded-ly say that sexy times can be all the time now.)
Anyways, they fight, Alexey reminds Anna that she's acting horribly, Anna admits it to herself then but as is Anna's way, conveniently forgets it about thirty seconds later.  So she goes abroad with Vronsky, "having absolutely declined all idea of one" (Tolstoy 395).
What drives me nuts about this is that over and over Anna claims she no longer cares in the slightest for her husband--but she misses her son, she would do the divorce if it was assured she could take her son.  (Well, even at times when she is promised that it would be possible she refuses, saying that it would force her to recognize that she wronged her husband [Tolstoy 578].)  Meanwhile, she barely ever remembers him unless if she's thinking of reasons not to bother with the work of filing for a divorce, and she only visits him once in the course of pretty much the rest of the book.  In fact, it's so infrequent that when Alexey tells their son that she is dead, it's believable.  She just disappears.  Even the daughter she has with Vronsky is kind of pushed to the side--she always says she's happy, she loves it, and when it is first born she is indeed so excited that she "rarely" thinks of her son (Tolstoy 423)--but it's kind of like the baby in The Great Gatsby.  "WHAT BABY?" There are even a few scenes towards the end where she helps take care of the baby and though she's not trying to eat it, it's clear that she's usually not helping the nurse or even in the room--Darya sees at once that "Anna, the two nurses, and the child had no common existence, and that the mother's visit was something exceptional" (Tolstoy 560).  Anna doesn't even really know where things are kept in the nursery, and, most damning of all, she doesn't even know how many teeth the baby has, which seems like a little thing, but considering how much she goes crazy over the baby that is pretty surprising.  Also considering how crazy new moms are over their kids in general... So, there's really nothing (for me) that redeems Anna--she just seems like a whiny, creepily jealous layabout!  Ugghhhh.  She's like the girl in Gone With the Wind, but lazy and stupid.

 "'I'm no judge, of course.  But good judges have said the same'" (Tolstoy 422).  Anna, you need to stop, because I'm like three seconds from throwing up all over you forever.
So, Anna gets worse when they are in Italy.  That quote is referring to a picture Vronsky painted of her--in Italy she has a (young) nurse with a son for her daughter--and she treats her condescendingly for fear of becoming jealous.  Anna, baby, I hate to say it, but if you're acting like that and you're worried about that, you're already there.  But they can still coincide more or less, and Vronsky is still wanting her to divorce Alexey so that they may get married (so I guess he's not the worst...)  Anna isn't completely insufferable at this point.  But oh, is it coming...

Very small aside--this edition has drawings in it every so often, and although I had noticed it in many of the other drawings up to this point, I marked the picture on the "Part Six" page splitter (Tolstoy 499)--1870s Russia is a lot like 1870s America, at least in the country.  Men in stetsons, men looking like civil war soldiers... The kids in this particular drawing are a little fancier, but the man watching the woman picking mushrooms with the kids looks like a skinny Colonel Sanders.  I just thought that it was such a strange similarity!

Oh, and speaking of that mushroom-picking scene, Tolstoy totally makes a dick joke in that part and nobody can convince me otherwise!  Sergey wants to ask the woman watching the kids to marry him, but he is too embarrassed and screws it up--they get into a conversation about mushrooms.  Instead of blurting out the question, he asks "'What is the difference between the "birch" mushroom and the "white" mushroom?'  Varenka's lips quivered with emotion as she answered: 'In the top part there is scarcely any difference, it's in the stalk'" (Tolstoy 513).  TOLSTOY JUST SAID IT, YOU READ IT HERE, TOLSTOY JUST SAID THAT SIZE (/GIRTH) IS WHAT COUNTS.

Tolstoy also makes a really weird narrative change on page 539.  It's nothing major, but for a couple of lines we get to see the thoughts of Levin's hunting dog.  She is confused because Levin can see prey, the dog, lower to the ground, cannot.  The dog gets confused, has a few lines expressing that, and then she kind of shrugs and goes running out blindly.  It punches you out of the story because you never get anything like that from an animal, and because Tolstoy could have easily conveyed the same thing without giving the dog apparent sentience.  He could of just said something like, "Laska hesitated, she was confused--she could not see a thing.  But when Levin urged her again, she seemed to shrug and went on to do as she was told"--or something like that.  Just--what was the point, for just this one time!?  Uuurgh, Tolstoy!  Come on.  I'd be angrier if not for the dick joke.  Sorry I'm not sorry.

Ah, next note, page 600.  Let me digress for a moment.  I'm sure you've all had a friend who gets a crush on somebody.  Well, I don't know if it's always quite the same for guys.  But you have a friend, female in my experience, and she likes a dude.  At first it's nothing but a crush.  It may or may not be clear to many around that she has the hots for this guy, but your friend has told you.  So she starts texting him.  And she overdoes it hard.  For example, constantly texting, reacting to the wrong things, reacting badly--and even though you're sitting there saying, don't say that, don't do that, rephrase that message or better yet, don't send any--your friend continues doing exactly whatever she feels the impulse to.  From a little before 600 on (more like around the end of part five on) the book regarding Anna and Vronsky more or less becomes the low-tech version of this.  In this case, Vronsky sends a telegram--Anna panics because Vronsky had to be away all weekend and without waiting for a word from him, sends her own telegram trying to get him back home--she says the baby is very ill.  The only logical explanation?  She says she's going to Vronsky (sans child)!  She doesn't of course--she gets the telegram from Vronsky and has to recover quickly.  Familiar?  Yeahhh.  Well, at its most basic points.

Oh, speaking of queer theory readings of the text--there's a very odd, fish-out-of-water moment on page 670.  Vronsky and Anna are fighting, and Anna pulls out a very strange line--"'The one thing I cared for here was Hannah... Why, you said yesterday that I don't love my daughter, that I love this English girl, that it's unnatural.  I should like to know what life there is for me that could be natural!'" (Tolstoy 670).  I'm not pulling for this one.  Again, hook me up with a critical essay, PLEASE.

Oh, and Anna becomes more of a bitch than ever.  During that fight, Anna decides to leave--because Vronsky wants to go somewhere on Sunday, and she wants him to stay till Monday because she's getting more controlling.  She walks out, Vronsky just shrugs and says enough is enough already.
On the way home Anna shows her absolutely worst and puts herself beyond redemption--she's good at charming people, and at a later point she meets up with Kitty and Levin--remember, Kitty and Vronsky were to be wed before she got in between them.  So things are awkward initially, but it's clear that Kitty and Levin are happy together and it's more or less water under the bridge.  But Anna, reflecting on it: "'If I were an immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in love with me... If I'd cared to.  And, indeed, I did care to'" (Tolstoy 685).  Admittedly there are a few moments where it looks a bit touch and go in that situation, but Levin seems fine once Anna has left.  And again, Anna, you are pretty awful--if you're thinking it, you're already there...
In this section she also has a semi-long monologue that's punctuated with sentences (thought by her) regarding what she sees.  And then once she says the seemingly incongruous sentence, Tolstoy then explains what's going on. Makes for some odd moments: "'He thought he knew me.  Well, he knows me as well as any one in the world knows me.  I don't know myself.  I know my appetites, as the French say.  They want that dirty ice-cream, that they do know for certain,' she thought, looking at two boys stopping an ice-cream seller" (Tolstoy 685).  How weird.  "Dirty ice cream".  Uh... Well, I see how it is like a little metaphor and all, but what a silly-sounding one!  Also she keeps on calling it a "dirty ice" (Tolstoy 685).  Is that, like, a thing?

As the story begins without Anna, so it ends without her.  Anna's little monologue on page 685 leads to a hateful trip on the train--reviling everyone and everything around her.  Spoiler alerts: Anna kills herself finally on the train.  She's miserable, and the couple in her compartment are having a debate.  This debate ignites a sudden revelation, and to "punish" Vronsky and "escape from every one and from myself" (Tolstoy 692) and throws herself in front of the train once she has arrived at the station.  It is worth noting that she dies kneeling (as though praying), and calling out to God to forgiveness (I'm still making the stern face, Anna).
It is ironic that Vronsky's mother, a little bit later, calls it the "'death of a vile woman, of no religious feeling'" (Tolstoy 703).  But it makes sense that she would hate Anna--of course Vronsky is more or less drinking his sorrows away and is in an awful state.  He was punished (not very Christian, Anna!).  And he bemoans the fact--along with everything else--that she was triumphant in punishing him.

Her death sends Levin into a troubled spiral about his life and the meaning of life.  So at the end it feels like we're finally getting to what Tolstoy wanted to talk about--some philosophical discourse.  But it feels awkward, especially since... Well, the titular character is dead.  And now this question is coming into play, where before it existed but never as a major theme.  It's... interesting, but it's almost tiresome to go into it.  It's like the end of Return of the King--this stuff is important and necessary to see, but it feels like everything happened and you're kind of ready to just tuck in for a nap and be done.  I'm kind of losing steam with this post (it's been a while since I've done such a long post...) but I can hold out for a little bit longer.
Levin considers suicide, avoids it out of fear--he has a revelation (read on for it) which fills him with joy, mainly he realizes that he is in fact Christian and that every human has to choose what's right for themselves (and making mistakes happens for any human, no matter what) and that he'll be able to improve himself.  His reason brought him there as Anna's brought her to suicide, and they both turn to God in the heat of those moments.
He also, even more importantly, realizes he does love the son borne to him by Kitty--something Anna, although she claimed she could, had trouble with.  Not loving Kitty and Levin's baby, of course--loving her own children, especially her baby.  Anna loved her kids at first, and kind of got bored with them, unless if she could use them in some way to attract Vronsky's attention, or anybody's, really.  Levin is kind of troubled and grossed out by the baby, and I imagine Anna's death also makes him wonder what the point of the birth was to begin with--but after a ferocious storm, and the baby appearing to recognize both Levin and Anna, he realizes that he loves his son more than anything.  This realization more or less brings on the revelation that pretty much closes the book out.  Unlike Anna, Levin announces to take full responsibility for his life, as I said, even the mistakes--he knows he can't realistically escape or stop his temper and suddenly become a holy man.  So is Anna meant to be a "bad" example of a person, and Levin good?  Not just because of their actions--I don't think Tolstoy necessarily thought Anna was bad because of what she did.  But she wasn't willing to act for herself, take what she nodded, she just kind of dragged everyone around her down and manipulated them, whereas Levin ends with the strong conviction to live as best as he can as he needs to.  And it's impossible to not notice that the book ends focused on a completely happy family.  A family apparently just like any other!
Tolstoy published the book after he was married for about a decade and had many of his children, so one would imagine that his ideas on the subjects inside are pretty valid too.



Sorry if this post was kind of sparse and unbalanced.  This was the longest book I've done in a while and I was kind of out of practice.  Also I'm on mad meds right now, haha.  Anyways, it wasn't that bad.  It was good, and though I think it's kind of ridiculous when book polls name in the number one book of all time (especially a magazine like Entertainment Weekly), it is really good.  I'm still thinking like top three at the highest.  I would recommend it, even if you don't have a lot of time on your hands, it's a relatively quick read (considering).  It also helps to have a basic knowledge of Russian history; I had the good luck of having happened to have read a book on Russian history to about 1985 shortly before reading this, so I kind of knew about what Tolstoy was commenting on.  Kind of.  Anyways, next book, not sure, but hopefully I'll write about it when I can get off these horrible horse pills.  See you all later!


 
Works Cited: Tolstoy, Leo.  Anna Karenina.  International Collectors Library: New York, 1944.
(Note on the edition: it's one of those awful ones that look really fancy and nice, but when you actually start reading it, you realize it's basically made out of cardboard.  I call this the "Readers' Digest" version.  Eugh...)

Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

Wow, amazingly enough I have apparently never written about this book before.  Fun fact before I start: this was apparently the best selling book the year I was born.
Well, this book is a testimony of sorts.  Dolores Claiborne is a woman who lived her whole life on the fictional Maine island of Little Tall.  (Hey, while I'm thinking of it,  how come the map in the beginning shows all of Stephen King's made-up Maine towns but 'Salem's Lot?)  She's about sixty when she is making this testimony, but this is more or less a tale of her life.  She's making the testimony to two cops and a stenographer because Vera Donavan, her longtime employer, died in her care and it seemed pretty clear that Dolores killed her--well, due to circumstantial evidence.  So not only does Dolores have to explain that, she also chose to explain everything--including the mysterious circumstances under which her husband Joe died, thirty years prior.
The story is told as she tells the cops and the stenographer, and though she responds and interacts with them, their dialogue is never recorded, nor are their actions or reactions--which I think is pretty clever, borderline genius.  Because you can't be swayed by them, but you know that they're reacting exactly the same way as you, and it makes the epilogue so much more satisfying and all the more sweeter.  It's a lot different from his other books in a lot of ways--even how it is written is extremely different--so it's hard to say "well, if you liked A-Aardvark by Stephen King, you'd like this..." or what, but it's worth a shot.  The movie was actually really good too, which was almost a little disappointing when I watched it because I was in the mood for a campy Stephen King movie.


OH, my first note of all doesn't have that much to do with the story either--it's written with Dolores's, er, dialect in mind.  I just always found it interesting because... Well, Mark Twain's books like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are written in dialect, thick Southern accents.  And that makes it nearly impossible for me to read them.  It's like a mental roadblock, simple as that--like in Village of the Damned (I think) when that dude tries to block his mind by imagining a brick wall.  Simple as that, only I don't do it on purpose, and it's really frustrating.  But my mind just shuts down.  But Dolores Claiborne doesn't bother me--granted, I don't know a whole lot of people from Maine specifically, but I do unquestionably know what a New Englander sounds like.  So the accent ain't no thang, so to speak.  Shout outs to Stephen King for writing about New England, even if it is mostly Maine (Maine is a teensy bit creepy though.)

Anyways.  Page three is when Dolores spills the beans that she in fact killed her husband Joe, though everyone on the island has more or less known or been convinced of that for the past thirty years--and she denies killing Vera vehemently, though she doesn't get to what happened until much later.  It was more or less circumstantial, though I don't want to quite spoil it.

The reason why I was reading this was to see if I ought to toss it, so to speak--like Chuck Palahniuk's Diary, whenever I think "hey, maybe I should read this book again", I automatically remember the grossest scene in the book that kept me away for so long in the first place.  In Diary, it's when the narrator remembers her dead husband piercing his nipple with a button.  In this book, it's when Dolores recalls the later years of caring for Vera: Vera went senile towards the end, and got mean--as Vera puts it, one of her ways of being a bitch.  She just spread her literal shit EVERYWHERE--she would try to "save up" on her crap and create a real nasty mess for Dolores just because.  The worst one described, it's all over her, it's spread on the walls--and she's giggling and laughing like it's so cute.  It's a disgusting scene.
This book also has these recurring elements--as Vera slips into dementia she starts seeing things she describes as wires coming out from corners, or dust bunnies coming out from under her bed.  This always throws me. It seems pretty clear that they're metaphors for old demons coming back and what have you, and it is somewhat clear (or at least possible) that Vera is describing whatever she's seeing the best she can and that's not necessarily what they are--like reports of supposed UFOs before planes were invented.  They're described as cigars in the sky, saucers, etc, because that's the best frame of reference that could be conjured.  Plus, Vera is losing her mind at this point in the testimony.
The only thing that really throws the idea of Vera doing her best to describe an unknown thing is that later Dolores has a dream of her own dust bunnies, that they grow together and form first Vera's husband's head and then her dead husband's head (although the timeline in the testimony goes back and forth, that memory is obviously from a time after Joe's death) and it gnashes its teeth and whatnot... I have trouble believing Dolores would have that trouble too, even if it was really harrowing.  That whole bit is tough to swallow, especially because it doesn't have a lot of other connections to anything in particular mentioned or hinted at in the book.  (Vera was a little anal retentive when she was still all there, and maybe her anal retentiveness and inner demons got merged, but... Ehh.  I don't know.  I'm just not feeling it.)

The start of the main trouble, Dolores explains, well... No, not so much explains, but it becomes clear later on that it is the major turning point in the book.  When she first presents it it only has importance as being the last time dead husband, Joe, ever beat her.  He hit her in the kidneys and after dinner she whacks him in the side of the head with their cream pitcher, and then brandishes their hatchet, making it pretty clear what will happen if he raises a hand again.  Their daughter Selena wakes up, takes in the scene, but Dolores sends her to bed without turning around.  Of course, we find out that Selena saw everything and thought wrongfully--as the man visiting Vera's the morning before the testimony takes place--that Dolores did it--that it was all Dolores's fault.  You know.
She also tempts Joe to kill her if he's that mad, but she assures him at Shawshank they're sure to have "one of those orange suits just your size" (King 68).
But months pass, Selena hits puberty and enters high school... and the two seem to get close, and Selena seems to get cold towards Dolores.  Dolores isn't stupid, she knows how that night looked and figured it was the cause, but... it's even worse than she thought.  See, she thought maybe they were just bonding, whatever.  Well, Joe decided he liked that.  A little bit more than a father should, if you get my meaning.  The second she hears this, "All at once I understood everythin, and Joe St. George's days were numbered from that moment on" (King 95).  So clearly a powerful motive behind the murder exists--and I think at that point no-one would question the murder.  Like I said, King does not give any direction to indicate how the stenographer and cops listening to the testimony react, and it does him well.  Unquestionably they react in the same complex way the reader does (who wouldn't?) and extra direction would just hurt it and make it unrealistic and awkward.
She then describes how life had changed in the house in the past few months--how at first they were close then they grew apart, and Selena began avoiding him--Dolores explains how the second oldest, Joe Junior, began avoiding his father as well--but I'm not sure if it was sexual abuse in his case, at least, Dolores never talks about it.  She seems kind of disconnected to her other two--well, or they're not as important to the plot.  (But I am curious!) But yeah, it seems that Joe Junior just realized that his father was little and hateful on his own and hated them for that.  Almost everything in his life seems to have been done in reaction to his father--Dolores recalls an A+ project Joe Junior did on FDR.  Joe Sr hated FDR the most of all the presidents, referred to him as "'Franklin D. Sheenyvelt'" (King 133).  ("Sheeny" is a slur for a Jewish person.)  And we learn pretty early on that Joe has gone on to a career in politics as a Democrat--just like FDR, just the party his father always hated.  Meanwhile, the youngest child, Pete, wanted to be just like his scumbag father (obviously he didn't know about the sexual abuse and whatnot, but he imitated Joe's walks and mannerisms and rude language and other behaviours) is revealed to have been killed in Vietnam.  Dolores refers to him as her "lost little lamb" at some point (I'm sorry--it seems that I didn't mark the spot!) so it seems as though after his father's death he just kind of wandered off there and got killed--but would have disappeared anyways.  If it hadn't been Nam, it would have been something, anything.

She tells Vera about it in a few days at work, and Vera listens pretty calmly.  Keep in mind--Vera's husband had died by this point too, and she was more or less living all year on the island.  And Vera listens and goes, "'Husbands die every day, Dolores.  Why, one is probably dying right now, while we're sitting here talking.  They die and leave their wives their money... I should know, shouldn't I?'... 'After all, look what happened to mine... An accident... is sometimes an unhappy woman's best friend'" (King 146-147).  Dolores almost faints dead away and ask what Vera means, Vera says "'Why, whatever you think'" (King 147), and that's more or less that.  It's obvious... But not quite.  Not quite.    

So an accident is orchestrated.  I'd rather not share how she did it--though I guess I've spoiled a lot--but Dolores did it.  I don't feel bad about this one because she goes out and says it on page three, remember?

"'Sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive,' she says.  'Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to'" (King 169).  This quote probably looks a little silly out of context, but it has stuck with from the very first time I read this and every time I read this book I'm almost in suspense for it.  In terms of the book, it means a lot, and it's almost like it has its own weird power.

Oh, and here's one thing I somehow never realized, any of the others times I've read this book.  Dolores's maiden name is Claiborne, the name she took in marriage was "St. George".  Hm... in Britain names like that are/were pronounced a little different, like St. John as I think the last name of the fellow in Jane Eyre would be pronounced "Sinjin", for example.  But I wonder if over here it would be the same?  Well, either way, that's not the reason why I made this note.  A short time after Dolores tells Vera what had happened with Selena and Joe, it's announced that there will be a visible eclipse that will cover the island.  Vera decides to hold a huge party and in getting the house ready goes a little nutty and fires some help over something stupid--the girl drops a cracked plate or some such thing.  Dolores chewed Vera out afterwards, and Vera gave her the job back.  Anyways, after Vera leaves to the ferry with her guests, the girl who had been rehired thanks Dolores for what she did and says: "'I know it was you, Missus St. George [that got my job back].  No one else'd dare speak up to the old dragon'" (King 173).  Honest to God, never got that before.  (Referencing the story of St. George and the dragon, guys!)  I have no idea how I missed it...

One thing that bothers me is, there are hints to a little girl in this book, kind of like how in Salem's Lot the opening chapters and ending chapters are about an unnamed man and a boy.  Whenever I read that book, I always think that maybe I have some grasp of who the man and the boy might be... Mark, if that was the guy's name, and some sole boy survivor...?  But in retrospect it never quite seems to pan out.  (Seeing the movie might actually help.)  Same with this.  Occasionally Dolores has visions of a girl around ten years old.  The first time she sees her is a few hours before the eclipse, in her vision the girl is sitting on her dad's lap with an eclipse viewer, and she says that maybe the dad's hand was too far up the leg.  Right before Dolores goes through and kills Joe, she sees the little girl again, searching under her bed for something.  In this vision the girl looks up at Dolores, sees her seeing her, and asks who Dolores is.  Many years later she thinks of the girl again, and never explains it or even looks back on it: "'That girl's in trouble... the one I saw on the day of the eclipse, the one who saw me.  She's all grown up now, almost Selena's age, but she's in terrible trouble'" (King 255).  Well--I said I didn't understand then, but a quick look at Wikipedia reveals the girl to be the young version of the main character in King's book Gerald's Game.  Supposedly that last vision refers to a specific event or some such thing in that book.  Not sure why Dolores and the girl are connected, actually, but the premise of that book looks kind of interesting, anyways....

Anyways, Dolores moves on, talks about her relationship with Selena "now"--because, she says, at the end of the day, all that she did (in terms of killing Joe) was for her.  Selena in this time doesn't eat enough, drinks like crazy (like Joe did) and never comes around.  Unmarried, of course.  Though they write and talk on the phone, they're basically estranged.  I would love to see this story and how the aftermath looks from her point of view.  Who knows?  Stephen King has been working on a sequel to The Shining for a while, maybe this will be next...

  There's a crazy revelation right at the end of the book, but I don't want to spoil it.  But it has to do with Vera, and it is HUGE.
The book ends strongly, and the epilogue is immensely satisfying.  It implies that there's still a tad bit more, and like I said, it would probably require a sequel of sorts from Selena's POV, but I want to see it so badly (even if it isn't necessary at all to the main point of the story).  So, yeah.  This is pretty different from Stephen King's other books, but it's the most real--and not just because the only supernatural occurrences are Dolores's visions of the girl in Gerald's Game.  King creates a convincing--um, character study probably isn't the right word, but he certainly creates a realistic character that hits home hard.  And the way he presents his story is very clever and very satisfying.  High five, Stephen King!


Works Cited: King, Stephen. Dolores Claiborne. Viking: United States of America, 1993.

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke

If the title of this book doesn't sound familiar, you have been living under a rock for about fifty some-odd years.  This is not the novelization of the classic Stanley Kubrick film, nor is the movie based on this book.  They were written in tangent, and although the book was started first, they were caught up to each other by the "Star Gate" sequence (the part with all the flashy colours).  And the book was revised based on Kubrick's suggestions, and... Maybe vice versa?  I'm not so sure.  Some things are different, like in the book Saturn is the goal, the goal planet is different in the movie (I believe, to be fair it has been a while since I watched it), but the story is basically the same.
Oh yeah, the story--for those of you living under a rock, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a sci-fi picture by Stanley Kubrick.  It's about the evolution of mankind on the widest scale imaginable, and also there is a psychotic computer named HAL on the ship that decides the crew is extra or noneffective and kills the majority of them (though in the book it implies that he is going insane due to different causes*).  Also there's more stuff, but it's sort of complicated and there's a reason why it's a two and half+ hour long movie (though it feels a lot longer).  This is the sort of movie you know, even if you don't know.  You've heard "I can't let you do that, Dave" or you've seen HAL's ominous and unfeeling red "eye" peering at you somewhere before--heck, just look at the evil AI system from Wall-E.  They're so similar it's kind of annoying.  Oh well...


So it starts out with some intros written by Arthur C Clarke, a dude you may only recognize from his relationship with this movie, but he was knighted for his services to literature by Queen Elizabeth II and invented the communication satellite.  So he trumps me in every respect possible.
Most of it is a comparison of how things in the book came true as technology progressed, or odd coincidences between the book and real life.  My personal favourite anecdote that Clarke shares is that supposedly Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin admitted that they had been tempted to "radio back the discovery of a large black monolith" (Clarke XVI).
Clarke also says that not only did he write this book (obviously) but he also wrote 2010, 2061 and 3001.  I knew there was something like a sequel in movie form, existed, but... Well, if I see these I'd probably pick them up, why not?  This book was really good.  He also mentions that the books are criticized because they "explain[ed] too much" (Clarke XVIII)--what??  Dude, you watch those movies and tell me that the mystery is beautiful and you weren't wondering about any part of it.  Yes?  Oh that is the case?  You're lying to both of us, man.  Trust me, the two complement each other really well, and this definitely doesn't go too far.  I guess I can't speak for the other three books, though.   

Anyways, the actual story: the book starts the same way as the movie, with the ape-men.  This is the first point where I thanked every possible turn of fate (and my boyfriend) for getting this book into my hands.  Granted, it's been a while since I saw the movie.  I mostly the remember monkeys doing monkey things, seeing the monolith, breaking stuff (for example, the importance of the monkey breaking the skull/skeleton is a whole lot clearer to me now) and killing another creature.  (Youtube is saying another ape.  Hold on while I watch some key scenes here.)  Anyways, we get to see a little more from the "main" ape, Moon Watcher, and what his life was like before seeing the Monolith and after.  And instead of monkeys just hanging around the slab, it projects an image that hypnotizes the monkeys and probes their minds, described in a way that recalls the Stargate section of the movie (for those of you that have seen it).  The thing that probes their minds guides them in doing simple actions like tying knots, squatting, and although it doesn't directly implant ideas into his head, you see how it causes the revelations like using tools.     I don't believe you see it in the film, but it even shows Moon Watcher and his ape clan overcoming their greatest threat, the leopard.  This is of course meant to symbolize man becoming the new predator or being able to assert himself over nature: I believe in the film this just symbolized with the crushing of the "pig" skull (the animal you see in the cuts look more like tapirs than pigs; I'm not sure about the skulls though).  And of course there is the murder of the opposing ape-tribe's leader.
One thing that makes me wonder is the bit about the jump cut--the scene in the movie where the bone is thrown up into the air then goes to the space ship is often hailed as the longest jump cut in film history.  Do they mean the jump itself has been timed and has proven to be that long?  Or do they mean long as in from 3 million BC to 2001 AD makes it the longest?
Also, like I said, it's been a long time since I've seen the film and my DVD no longer exists (I think my brother claimed it), but I can't help but wonder: I remember that the ape man segment was REALLY long.  Or at least, I remember wanting to get to space already.  But it was at least 25 minutes, so knowing Stanley Kubrick's thoroughness, I can't help but wonder if it was 33/37 pages, exactly how long Moon-Watcher's portion of the book is (or 34-37 if you count the bridging chapter that tells of mankind's expansion in general).

So we go through that and we're immediately in 2001, though Clarke does update us on the social climate, technological changes, and politics that are important for the reader to know.  It's also pretty clear that he's a genius but he keeps all the scientific stuff toned down enough so that nearly anybody would be able to understand it.  I must say in his alternate take on the future, it's interesting to note that he notes that "birth control was cheap, reliable, and endorsed by all the main religions" (Clarke 44).  High five Arthur C Clarke! (Though that may be the most fantastical aspect of this book, unfortunately.)  Although he mentions that in his alternate future an accepted/cheap birth control had come a little bit late and overpopulation was still an issue despite all of that.  It's worse in his alternate future, but still...

So I commit my own longest jump in this blog's history (lies), and my next mark is on page 82, when Floyd arrives on the moon to check out the second monolith that was discovered there.  It's got about the same measurements as the one that appeared to the ape men, and an interesting fun fact is that the ratios of the film measure up to the film picture, so it can be argued that you're viewing the film through a Monolith on its side. Anyways, this monolith doesn't teach as its earth twin did, it just sends out a pulse letting whoever was waiting for the message know that it has been unearthed by somebody or something.

Oh, also, HAL: stands for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, it just happens to match up with IBM... Well, on this one... that is one hell of a coincidence, Arthur C Clarke.  I mean, I can't quite argue it, but... Man, I don't know.  I guess this is just one of those things that Kubrick conspiracy theorists love, and I've read too many of their theories to completely swallow this.  It's possible that for Clarke it was just a coincidence, but Kubrick spotted it and jumped on it--as the conspiracy believers will point out, a lot of the computers and screens have the IBM logo on them that you can see in reflections and if you freeze the screen when all of the planets are aligned on the vernal equinox... No, actually, you can see the logo in stills.  But again, IBM was probably contracted to actually make the computers and systems used, since Stanley Kubrick wanted all of this to function as if they were actually going to shoot it off to space, hahahaha (that man was insane holy crap).
Oh, and again with HAL, Clarke gives us a brief history on how computer technology/robots have evolved in a nice "you are an English major and you still think blowing on electronic devices fixes them" way.  That is, keep it simple, stupid.  Even I can follow this and yeah, I blow into the DS slot when I switch games just in case.  Still.

So the team is the same.  Obviously the visuals are less cool (my imagination is nothing compared to Kubrick's, let's be honest) and HAL is not as threatening because he is not a creepy glowing red eye, and no matter how good the book is, it cannot do what Stanley Kubrick did.  I know I'm biased because I saw the movie first, but man, I was feeling safe when I read this because everything wasn't white, on a hamster wheel, only to be punctuated by a glowing red robot eye.  The eye couldn't see me, I was safe.  (Why didn't Sauron scare me this much?  Oh right, because Middle Earth isn't isolated and floating seemingly aimlessly through space.)  What I'm trying to say is, Stanley Kubrick sure can set one hell of a mood.

At the end of chapter seventeen, Clarke says "The greatest hope of Discovery's little crew was that nothing would mar this peaceful monotony in the weeks and months ahead" (Clarke 128).  This is the only part where I felt like Clarke was being patronizing.  Clarke, please.  Of course something terrible is going to happen to space.  It always does.

Anyways, on page 154, something goes wrong with the satellite to Earth!  Surprise, moviegoers.  HAL cuts the humans off from communicating with the other humans about the issues, leaving him to pick off the humans uncontested.  Actually, HAL isn't as nefarious* in the book, which is kind of disappointing for me, since when you think of the film, HAL's plot line tends to overpower the other bits.  Probably because it's the least, well, heady.  ...Anywayyys, they actually replace the device once and then HAL tells them it must be replaced again because the replacement isn't working either, and that's when Frank Poole is killed by HAL, and although it happens in space, the means of how he is killed exactly are a little different.  It almost seems a little gorier in the book, though to be honest both are a little fuzzy to me now.

Actually, the way it seemed to me in the movie is that HAL didn't necessarily destroy the radio controls on purpose--and actually, let me place the asterisk the last two should have directed you to here (*)--hope you're all using ctrl+f!  To me, when I saw it, it seemed like that was what had begun HAL's unraveling--the fact that a part of the ship which he basically was should be broken perhaps made him feel inferior and insufficient.  To destroy Poole perhaps could have somehow hid that, and in destroying the rest of the crew he could say, "I am better, I don't need you"--something which may as well be true, and would more or less fit in with the idea that he has gained human intelligence, or is on his way, and has acquired some kind of psyche (it might also be noted that HAL was "born" in 1997 ('92 or '91, depending on some drafts)--so in 2001 he would have been around six (or nine or ten)--so depending on the age, he would have been at around the age a human is when they start becoming more self-aware, deepening their ability to think critically and problem solve or at least weigh problems and solutions more effectively, etc.  (So I'm a little more attached to HAL being ten, but six is probably just if not more appropriate.)
But HAL in the book's downfall seems to be that the true purpose was to find the next monolith floating out in space.  He was not allowed to tell the crew that this was the true purpose of the mission, and in struggling with the issue of ethics in telling the truth--which would go against his orders--or not, which would be willingly deceiving his crew but remaining true to his orders--well, those incongruities are what drove him mad.  There are a few paragraphs sort of from HAL's view that support this.  So saying the satellite wasn't working was his way of removing himself from his "conscience" or the programming which forced him to lie, or destroy what he had to lie to.  Personally, I like the cold villain HAL is in what I perceived in the film (maybe that will change when I watch the movie though...)

Oh, and in the book there's not the creepy lip-reading scene, which is kind of disappointing.  Again, he's not as nefarious in the book.  They just talk about it in front of him, that he could be wrong, albeit very kindly, with a lot of tact.
Oh, and when the replacement unit "breaks", HAL keeps on pausing for long amounts of time--you know, thinking up something.  And when pressed he gets uppity, he tells Dave that there must be something wrong with "'your test procedures'" (Clarke 173).  I'm kind of feeling that more for the movie HAL, though.  Rough life.
And of course when they finally get a visual/radio transmission from Earth, HAL's alarms go off and cut the transmission (he was announcing that the replacement device broke).  Of course.

Oh!  But when HAL starts going out of power he still sings "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do..."!  The singing isn't as eerie, but somehow his breakdown as a whole is creepier in the book: "'Dave,' said Hal, 'I don't understand why you're doing this to me.... I have the greatest enthusiasm for the mission.... You are destroying my mind.... Don't you understand?.... I will become childish.... I will become nothing.... ...I am a HAL Nine Thousand computer Production Number 3.  I became operational at the Hal plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1997.  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.  The rain in Spain is mainly on the plain.  Dave--are you still there?  Did you know that the square root of 10 is 3 point 162277660168379?  Log 10 to the base e is zero point 434294481903252... correction, that is log e to the base 10... ...two times two is... two times two is... approximately 4 point 101010101010101010.... I seem to be having difficulty--my first instructor was Dr. Chandra.  He taught me to sing a song, it goes like this, 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do.  I'm half crazy all for the love of you.'  The voice stopped so suddenly that Bowman froze for a moment... Then, unexpectedly, Hal spoke again... 'Good... morning... Doctor... Chandra... This... is... Hal.... I... am... ready.. for... my... first... lesson... today....' Bowman could bear no more... and Hal was silent forever" (Clarke 202-203).

After HAL "dies", Dave continues on, as the sole survivor of his ship.  And he does find the next monolith--or, the Star Gate, orbiting Saturn.  The narrative pulls out to give a brief overview/summary of the Beings that planted the monoliths, eager to plant the seeds of intelligence (were they Arn?).  It reminds me a lot of Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question", actually.  The "lords of the galaxy" (Clarke 245) seems to follow a pretty similar "evolutionary" path as the people do in that story once space travel  The only difference between the monolith on the moon and the one out of Saturn is that it completely dwarfs the one on the moon--oh, and it actually is a gate--Dave flies right in with the ship, at which point, welcome to the trippy last half hour of 2001: A Space Odyssey the movie.  The last thing the station on Earth hears from Dave is: "'The thing's hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!'" (Clarke 254).

Like the weirdness of the movie, the star gate section is extremely interesting to read--but it's difficult to describe and even quoting it would 1. be far too long and 2. feel like I'm being a cheat.  It's definitely more amazing than the scene in the film, a little more sensical, but just as hella trippy.  He also walks into the hotel room like in the movie, and it goes more in depth and it's a little more interesting than the movie.  The telephone is fake, the writing is copied but blurred (like writing in a photo), the books look like books, but the pages are blank.  The drawers were dummies... and so on.  There's food in a fridge--and though the containers are made to look like earthen food containers (a cartoon of milk, cereal boxes, etc), they all contain a blueish nutritious gruel--kind of with the consistency of bread pudding, Clarke describes it as.  The most interesting bit is that going through the star gate, Dave theorizes that the beings who set everything in place are long gone and extinct.  This implies that those beings are still here and were prepared for him--they seem to want to grow him to be what they are.  The star baby fetus thing in the film is the first few steps to it, and it's about where Dave is in his extra-evolution when the book ends.

Anyways, my final note--well, second to last note, I should mention (can't remember if I have already) there are four books in this series.  So it ends with a sense of, well, not ending--it goes on apparently.  I don't know if the next three books are as good, and I wouldn't be inclined to buy them, but I would go out of my way to find them and read them.  Anyways.  The last paragraph of the book is: "Then [Dave] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers.  For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.  But he would think of something" (Clarke 297).  But this line stands out because way back in the beginning, Moon-Watcher, the first thinking Man-Ape, ends the section about him specifically in the same sort of way: "For a few moments Moon-Watcher stood uncertainly... Now he was master of the world, and he was not quite sure what to do next.  But he would think of something" (Clarke 33).


Sooo yeah, there it is!  I don't have much to say, other than it really is an amazing sci-fi book.  It could stand alone, but it is a great complement to the movie, even if certain things don't quite match up.  It's impressive, and I'm glad I picked it up.  (I have to watch the movie again!!!)  I don't think the sequels will be able to come close to this, and may in fact, ruin the "mystery", but I'll still be on the lookout for them and let you all know how it goes.  See you soon!  I'm reading a book on Oscar Wilde right now, but most likely the next book I'll be writing about will be Dolores Claiborne.


Works Cited: Clarke, Arthur C.  2001: A Space Odyssey.  New American Library: United States of America, 1999.

The Dark Tower/The Abolition of Man

Hey, I haven't posted in a while because for the past like six months I've been working on Stephen King's Dark Tower series.  It took about five extra months because the file on my Kindle for the fourth book was corrupted so I had to find a hard copy, and then I dropped my Kindle while I was on the sixth book and I had to wait until I was back home to finish up the series.
Anyways, I didn't take any specific notes on the books... Well, I had some on my Kindle, but of course that means next to nothing now... But I have to recommend the series.  If you've been looking for a fantasy epic, this is perfect, even if you're not a big fan of Stephen King.  It's a lot different from many of his other books, and as always, there are a lot of Easter eggs for those who are a fan of his other books (but it still makes sense without having read every single other thing.  In some cases, it would have been a little easier without having read certain things, and in some cases some stuff would seem random if you hadn't [like the cameo made by Dinky Earnshaw from "Everything's Eventual"].  And in some cases it is just neutral and whatever).  Also, Desperation gets some play, which is always exciting for me.



As for Abolition of Man, it's one of CS Lewis's lesser-known works, though if you look at the post for That Hideous Strength, or read it, CS Lewis says that they are kind of theoretical or philosophical twins.  Well, I've put that  book out of my mind completely, so maybe that's why The Abolition of Man wasn't doing it for me.  And I just noticed when signing into this account for the first time since December, someone commented on that post with a link to his own thoughts on the book--I skimmed it, it mentioned The Abolition of Man, I should probably read it prior to writing this, too late, I'm going to read it over the weekend instead.
Anywayyys.  This book was kind of boring.  He applies a lot of deconstructionism to real life, which... Well, deconstructionism in the literary theory sense doesn't really lend itself to real life applications, although I personally enjoy deconstructionist looks at fiction and whatnot.  He starts off with deconstructing sections from textbooks he has read, which is all well and good, though he looks at it really subjectively which in this case really gets in the way of his reading.  But then he tries to bring over his ideas to apply to real life, and it's bulky and awkward.  It's kind of like how I felt when I was wrestling with various Camus works: well, that's an interesting theory, buuuut you only have to be alive to know that things aren't quite like that.  CS Lewis seems to fall down a slippery slope, deducing that if textbooks present information that is theoretically wrong like X, society will slowly fall apart and this and that.  Though some of his observations ring true, it's not going to be because of a textbook that life gets harder and perhaps less observant of humanity.  He clearly doesn't remember grade school, because no-one read their textbooks/purged them immediately upon hitting the summer vacation.  The fact that he doesn't remember says something too, eh?
Though unlike Camus there are things that apply to modern life.  I also am not sure how CS Lewis thought he was going to try to take apart society without using, you know, sociology.  It may seem like it's splitting hairs for me to say deconstructing and a sociological look at something are different and have different situations which they should be applied to--but they do, although they can work in tangent.  It was just... really weird.  Everything he set up was so awkward and unbalanced for me that I honestly couldn't even focus on the point he was trying to make there.

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, the cover itself: the bio does not list Narnia in his best-known work.  Come on, man.

One particularly weird thing I noticed that also made it hard for me to focus on his argument or figure out his point was his references to Hinduism.  Granted, there are a lot of religions that believe that you can achieve enlightenment or become one with the universe or God(s) or whatnot, but in the second Space Trilogy book, CS Lewis says that "What Pantheists falsely hoped of Heaven bad men really received in Hell.  They were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring.  The question whether Satan, or one whom Satan has digested, is acting on any given occasion, has in the long run no clear significance.  In the meantime, the great thing was not to be tricked again" (173).  Obviously such an idea is not viewed positively.  So when he (seems to) reference it positively here I was a tad bit thrown.  He also relies heavily on concepts of "Tao" to get his points across, but I don't think his understanding of Tao is that great.  Certainly the book suffers from his half-self-defined version of the concept as well.   
His idea of Tao is also a little confusing because of his emphasis on it: he imagines it as state of mind, which to some extent, unless if I'm mistaken, Taoism is, or plays a major role in it.  But again, he has expressed great disdain in other works for non-Christian religions, which this is considered.  But it seems that he believes Taoism was the goal of how humanity ought to act/be, and every other religion and philosophy (oh?) is an attempt to line up with it.   But... Hm.  Well, you understand why I'm having trouble taking this from CS Lewis as opposed to, say, when Jack Kerouac expresses similar beliefs in The Dharma Bums or Desolation Angels, right?

Again, later, he goes on to describe how the sacrifice of oneself for the community would be nonsensical in the terms that the textbook has made which will somehow have a ripple effect on the entirety of society (by the way, what the textbook said was that when a man said something was sublime, it means that "I have sublime feelings" [Lewis 15].  Okay).  This apparently 'debunks' sentimental/traditional values... The mindset "claims to be cutting away the parasitic growth of emotion, religious sanction, and inherited taboos, in order that 'real' or 'basic' values may emerge" (Lewis 41-42).  One stupid idea in a textbook is not going to cause this.  Perhaps it seemed a lot more likely that this would happen in 1947, when this book was first published (1984 wasn't published yet, but Animal Farm would have been fresh in the mind, and Brave New World had been around for over 15 years by that time), but the idea for that time still seems pretty unrealistic.  Then again, Britain was also beaten a lot worse in WWII than America physically, so maybe such a negative outlook was expected.  Again, the same germ which produced 1984, producing this.
And if he just intended this text book to be the introduction to this idea, what an awkward way to do it!  This would be a better example to put in its own paragraph or chapter, not to make it like the vein that runs through it, because it totally throws the paper and makes it lopsided and awkward.
Anywayyyys, the martyrdom thing.  Basically he just says, should people like this succeed, you could never expect sacrifices for other men or community--shame wouldn't move them, nor love, nor whatever.  In fact, nothing could move them either way.  Okay.  But if people are this flat, you could presumably just say, "Go get yourself killed".  Of course, my idea takes into account that there will be people controlling brain dead masses.  Which, should this come to fruition, would have to be the case, unless if everybody evolves backwards into cave men.

He also brings up, in the middle of nowhere, as an ill-fitting example, that of sexual satisfaction.  This is another topic that kind of brings me pause when he brings up, because I don't think CS Lewis was all that experienced with, well, sex.  So he says that "For of course sexual desire, being instinctive, is to be gratified whenever it does not conflict with with the preservation of the species" (Lewis 45).  This doesn't get mentioned again till about a dozen pages later, in a different context.  So what is CS Lewis talking about here?  Against overpopulation?  Protection of the parents'/mother's health?  That seems a little modern for this, but since CS Lewis changes the subject right afterwards, we'll never know.

 Oh yeah, on page 47, CS Lewis uses the phrase "infinite regress"--which is akin to putting a stamp on the cover over the book that says "I AM DECONSTRUCTING".  I recognized what was going on prior to that, but upon seeing that I just kind of rolled my eyes.  Deconstructionist ideals can be applied to the human psyche and real life, but this is the first time I've ever seen something taken apart by it (I'm thinking about it now, and you could argue that Camus's theories behind his works make him a deconstructionist, but it's so easy to destroy his works with deconstructionism that it doesn't even matter man), and boy is it awkward.  The fact that he never brings in any other deconstructionist buzzwords or even just this earlier on gives me a feeling that he was sort of piddling around, kind of unsure about the theory he wanted to use.  Then again, he didn't have the benefit of a handy-dandy book by Lois Tyson... So yeah, I'm probably being kind of harsh...

"If  man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his dehumanized Conditioners" (Lewis 84).

"A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery" (Lewis 84-85).  : /  But your use of dogmatic makes this statement problematic...


At the end of this book there are sections of quotes which go to support his Tao theory and the laws he believes all cultures or many (especially Classical cultures, it must be noted) uphold.  Personally, I think these would have been more useful, you know, in the actual paper used to support and strengthen it, but the quotes are still interesting:
"'Terrify not men or God will terrify thee'" (Lewis 97; Ancient Egyptian, Precepts of Ptahhetep).
"'"To live according to nature is the supreme good"'" (Lewis 107; Roman, Cicero).
"'The second of these achievements is no less glorious than the first; for while the first did good on one occasion, the second will continue to benefit the state forever'" (Lewis 108; Roman, Cicero).

Also problematic is that in this section, he includes a quote from the end of Beowulf--because this piece was edited by Christians in an effort to lay ideals onto Anglo-Saxons a little more easily, it is very unbalanced.  Where Beowulf is manly and vicious and violent and an Anglo-Saxon idol, at his death in the end of the piece he is named as being "'the mildest and gentlest of the kings of the world'" (Lewis 116; for some reason CS Lewis does not site the poem itself properly, but it's there, I promise).  This makes the editing in the original piece obvious, because it just doesn't gel with who Beowulf proves himself to be.  He ripped Grendel's arm off!  When he first comes to the castle he sure as heck doesn't uphold Christian modesty or anything like that.  As I said, the editing that the scribe made back in the early ADs is painfully obvious at the end of the piece.  So using this one specific quote makes Lewis look uneducated or as though he was purposely ignoring the whole rest of the book.  Which of course never looks good.


So... as far as CS Lewis's books go... This is definitely my least favourite.  It's either poorly written or very dated (or both).  He doesn't use his theory well, but in his defense, deconstructionism is a pain in the butt.  Still, he could have done a little more than throwing in one deconstructionist buzz phrase.  The construction of the whole piece is a little off and awkward too, it's not organized that well.  Then again, I also hated and had trouble with That Hideous Strength, and according to CS Lewis himself, the books were philosophical twins.  Oops... Should I have read that article that guy sent me before I wrote this?  Undoubtedly.  But I'm going to go do that now...


Works Cited: Lewis, CS.  The Abolition of Man.  The Macmillan Company: New York, 1947.
 Lewis, CS.  Perelandra.  Collier Books: New York, 1962.