Catch 22

The other weekend I read Catch 22, it was one of the funniest books I've read. It also had a brilliant development of themes. One was the power and stupidity of bureaucracy. This is where the book gets its title, the main character Yossarian wants to escape military duty by being insane. You are insane if you choose to fly missions, and only need to ask to not fly but if you ask not to fly then you show you are aware of the danger and therefore not insane. Numerous other Catch 22's are used which strengthen this ideas of the absolute power of bureacacy. In line with this it is very much a 60s novel, being blatantly anti-war and anti-authority, though it probably distinguishes from this by lining its criticism also at world war 2.

Midnights Children and Never Let Me Go

You could probably couldn't read two more different books one after each other than Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (my eng class text) and Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie. One is a massive book written in the magical realism style and has a political allegory. The other is a normal sized book which is chronicled through the memories and thoughts of it's main character. Yet like all antithesis's they have their similiarities.

Midnights Children is written through the eyes of Saleem Sinai who is telling his story to a group of women and is structured looking back at events at the past. The reliability of his story is deliberately put into question as he admits later he got the date of Gandhi's death wrong but later concludes "it happened that way because thats how it happened." This is tied also with Saleem being determined that he and his story will have meaning and thus he is careful to highlight the meanings and literal metaphors of life which are connecting his family with Indias larger history. This story is characterised by a change in tone often going from light hearted to serious and mixing self-glorification with self-depreciation.

Never Let Me Go is structurally similar to Midnights Children, being told through the eyes of Kathy H who is a clone in a boarding school for clones. The story takes us through her relations with other characters takes us through the different periods of her life. Unlike Midnights Children the story is deliberately told in dull bland prose and emphasised is the lack of meaning, lack of purpose and acceptance of it.

Read In Cold Blood by Capote

In Cold Blood was one of Capotes more famous books as it launched the genre of novelistic non-fiction. The book is written like a novel but is supposed to be all true, on the events leading up to and after the murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.

Maybe it's because I'm very interested in murder cases but I found it only mildly interesting. Capote shows good technical skills as a writer, but never quite knows where events in the book stand, is every thought Capote emits coming from characters heads as they go through events accurate? Almost impossible. If Capote has not taken artistic license he has god-like powers of making people remember places, events and thoughts in perfect photographic memory and getting a range of people to share them to him. Also other journalists suggest he made up passages and quotes to fit his story.

Coming Up For Air By George Orwell

I was going to write this with the clergyman's Daughter but for a blog post that turned into a super large monster so I decided to do this later and tried to keep it shorter as I have lots of work to do and could easily spend all my year writing my blog and reading books.

Anyway a Coming Up For Air takes the narrative view of Tom Bowling. A sometimes crude fellow who makes cipher for Orwells thoughts about the changes in Britain and the coming WWII. Orwell discusses the impact of WWI on peoples mindset saying its not that the past was necessarily better but in a sentimental way people had this innocence that everything would remain the same, life would always go on as usual. Secondly Orwell develops ideas on the unattainability of our, past using Tom having an urge to return to his home village and then finding his town is utterly eaten up by development and his idyllic fish pond has changed into a rubbish dump. Thus also complaining the best of britain was being destroyed by industrialisation. As always Orwell displays a very penetrating view of reality , which kind of like a scientist with a microscope helps us to discover many of the layers which make it up.

Read A Clergymans Daughter

A Clergymans Daughter is probably an under appreciated novel, perhaps hidden by the blinding strength of 1984. While Orwells really famous novels are political in nature this focuses with almost as much penetrating skill with more social aspects of society.

A Clergymans Daughter tells the story of Dorothy Haze the daughter of a rector of the local church who ruthlessly schedules her life to almost to the extent she's unconsciously or perhaps consciously a constant slave. Dorothy ends up losing her memory and goes on a number of adventures in different roles in the bottom and middle classes of society.

Orwell stuffs huge amounts of ideas into each episode of this novel. He uses her normal life as a rectors daughter to show village life and its how it functions with gossip, friendship and church also he uses it to introduce religion, the huge diversity in belief and show us Dorothys own. Later Dorothy works as Hop picker (Orwell himself worked this job) and showing how wages are systematically misused so the pickers get hardly anything, the sense of euphoria one gets for working all day and its influence on stopping critical thought (you're so tired). When Dorothy becomes a school teacher Orwell systematically shows how capitalism, private schools and silly parents all interact to give children a crap education that can't change. Finally when Dorothy talks to the village atheist Mr Warburton and goes home Orwell expresses concludes ideas about religion and servitude.

About religion, despite losing her faith Dorothy expresses what Daniel Dennett calls "belief in belief." That is Dorothy still believes religion is a good thing and wants other people to still believe, that religion gives purpose to life and this is contrasted with Warburton. But in the end we are shown Dorothy still does has a purpose, inspite of what she says, it is realised their is little difference inside the person between belief and non-belief as long as you have something to work towards, you have your purpose.

With servitude Orwell shows how forces systematically hold Dorothy in chains. In the hop fields she can only really work and get jobs by relying on Nobby her vagrant friend. As a school teacher she is bound to misery both by Mrs Creevy giving her piss poor wages and free time ensuring she is always working on something. Alternately Warburton offers to be her husband to an extent free her, yet she still would be relying on him and be with this ugly old man. So instead she has to work a kind of servitude with her father, doing church work she doesn't believe in.

Finished Letters to a Young Contrarian

Letters To A Young Contrarian had the authors tone but was different from the previous book of his I read. This book was based on Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet and Hitchens own letters to his students (he works as a professor on writing and literature etc). Part of his style is of quoting and refering to other people and works aiding him to explain his points, to some it may be burdensome and an acquired taste, but I find it enriching though it some it does make one feel I must read more.

For literature and general society one part letter which deserves analysis was about the necesssity of conflict. Hitchens points out that "in life we make progress by conflict and in mental life argument and disputation." But I would take that further and say without conflict, without working to improve with a little feedback and struggle people generally slide backwards. No conflict, argument or struggle usually means lazy acceptance of a position whatever it may be. In novels for any character to change and develop they need some kind of conflict forcing them to reflect on themselves and maybe adapt. Hitchens other point is about perpetual happiness or paradise, "imagine a state of bliss and perpetual happiness and harmony, and you have summoned a vision of tedium and pointlessness and predictability." We all know this is true on some level. Think of a novel which has no struggle, no excitement, the character is just happy all the time and you can't disagree it would be a very boring novel.

Read The Great Gatsby Novel

The novel of the Great Gatsby was excellent. The film was very true to the book, the only real difference being the book was able to expand on its characterization of Gatsby, Tom and Nick. Really interesting was the introduction which I've only half read which traces the influences of the novel. Also one of the important themes I previously forgot to mention was "the American dream."
This in the novel is represented by Gatsby and his rise from having only clothes on his back to becoming a millionaire and less to the letter of the dream but more to the spirit, is Gatsby transformation of his character, from James Gatz to the poised cool Jay Gatsby.

Watched movies Great Expectations and Lolita

Almost every minutae of the world can be both used for both good and evil. Obsessional love is no different. In the movie "Great Expectations" (a modern take on the Dickens classic) which I watched recently, there is a strong portrayal of the good obsessional love. I also watched "Lolita" where the dark side of obsessional love is shown. 

Lolita direct by Stanley Kubrick was a old film based on the novel of the same name by Nabokov. It was about the obssessional love this middle aged university lecturer Humbert, has for a 14 year old girl. This obsessional love turns Humbert first into a criminal, with sexual relations with a minor and practically inducing suicide of his wife. Then later he is destroyed, becoming a baubling mess after Lolita has run away from him, and then finally murders Clare Quilty, goes to jail and dies of thrombosis. The acting and story telling of the film were excellent. However my Nana telling me the film was banned at one point and anyone reading the book was regarded as morally perverse, makes one expect some hedonistic material but at least with modern standards the film was very tame, though a lot was probably censored as the director Kubrick says he wouldn't have made the film if he knew how harsh the censors would be.  If one wanted to regard how realistic or idealised the "love" was, as one of the themes of past scholarship questions, it would be quite realistic. After all a much worse image of Josef Fritzl has been cemented all too strongly in our minds.

Great Expectations (again modern take) wasn't as good as Lolita. It was about a good hearted boy Finn who falls in love with Estelle. Estelles aunt hurt in love has trained her to be cold and toy with men so Estelle falls into this pattern with Finn. I won't give an excessive overview but Finn becomes a great success because he helped a convict he saved when he was a little boy and in the end after much trouble meets Estelle again and they love each other. With "love" it is pretty idolised as a real person is unlikely to be obsessive enough to wait the decades for this cold heartless women to actually find a heart. As an enjoyable reader of other of Dickens books I will suspend judgement on him. But this movie definitely messed it up, like all good things love in films needs real conflict. Instead we have Finn perhaps true to his name just flopping on the ground saying "come on Estelle, please this time love me."

So it seems at least in this case the dark side of "love" seems more probable. But I wonder is it perhaps because the media would always obsess over a horror story about love and not report the happy endings as too boring. Perhaps also too blame are the writers of crappy romance movies, who can't conceive of positive love without raining us with cliches. 

Finished Love, Poverty and War by Christopher Hitchens

Love, Poverty and War is an fascinating collection of essays by the journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens. It was very much to my taste as it provided a reasonable variety. The title was was from the old idea that a mans was incomplete until he experiences the trials of love, poverty and war. These make up three sections of the book with Americana added for travel stories. I find Christopher Hitchens a always intriguing writer and speaker because he's the ultimate anti-sheep with an often acidic wit for what he dislikes.

Love is books he has written about either as reviews or introductions. It was particularly useful for scholarship english as it contained analysis of authors and works. One of the best essays was an introduction to Brave New World which seems to cover almost every concept one could use in an essay about Brave New World. Particularly intriguing to me was the fact Huxley taught George Orwell at Eton and Hitchens traces probable influence of Brave New World on Orwells novel. However one of the most interesting was finding the social context. Huxley was writing 1930s when modernity was just becoming into full view, when cars, condoms and genetics were just entering society. Huxley also was part of the upper class and as such had an interest in breeding in both the aristocratic and scientific sense. Also there is Huxleys contempt for the masses and his favourite philosopher Pyrrho who taught judgement could be suspended on all matters of truth. To put it suavely, I will definitely use his ideas to develop my own on Brave New World and the theme of dystopian novels. Anyway the other good ones in love were review of a Kipling biography and Byron which went through there poems and lives giving me a hunger for them though Kipling especially.

The second section was Americana which was interesting but least interesting of the sections. It basically consisted of travel writing around America. Not too much relevant for scholarship but this quote I might find a use for “The food! The Coffee! The newspapers! the radio! These would all disgrace a mediocre one party state, much less a prosperous country.” Its in the "Ballad on Route 66" and is aimed at the standardization of america, which should apply to my dystopia theme. Thinking about it something to do with Brave New World which is going to pop up all too often in this blog. Probably something to do with stress-free consensus and consumerism.

The third section was poverty. This I really enjoyed. Here one gets a real taste of his polemics against a number of famous figures. This is where is his anti-sheep reveals itself. Thus armed with facts and an acidic prose, I enjoyed re-evaluating a number of figures, the Dalai Lama and Michael More, who despite liking his work in my youth was already suspicious but this confirmed a dislike and distrust of his work once and for all. One everyone must read is his review of a biography of JFK where Hitchens mobilizes the very open but rarely reported evidence that JFK was one of the sickest presidents in office, on a cocktail of drugs and thus the image of a young healthy, vigorous person was the fabrication of his spin doctors. My favourite quote of the section was something like this 'My definition of ‘celebrity culture' is one where people's actions are judged by their reputations and not their reputations by their actions." (I filched this one off the net but it was basically the same as in the book). These points will be good for real life references for themes such as appearance vs reality. The infantilization of celebrity culture and all that jazz. Another excellent essay in the section is "Why Americans Aren't Taught History" I may quote use this in scholarship as most dystopian novels have historical amnesia as a pivotal part of their system of control. The essay itself explores the absolutely poor history teaching and knowledge in America and examines the revolting text-books and causes.

The final section is his work as a war correspondent. All was very interesting, but most chilling was writing about his time in North Korea where Nineteen Eighty-Four lives with its constant adulation of their dead god president Kim Il Sung and his remaining version on earth the dear leader Kim Jong Il. 

Modern neuroscience and the dystopia

I feel I have to write about science so when I found this interesting study on the side-effects of parkinsons treatment. So it seemed a perfect connection with one of my favourite forms of literature the dystopian novel.

Parkinsons disease is caused by the rapid death of a special type of dopamine producing brain cells. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which has a varity of functions in the brain but chief among them is helping to produce movement. So to simplify it a little, as there less and less dopamine in the brain Parkinsons patients gradually are less and less able to move. This is treated by a cocktail of drugs which hopefully create more dopamine in the brain. The other function of dopamine is a reward chemical, so when you win a game of tennis or cards or hunt that deer (in a more hunter gatherer context) your brain produces extra dopamine, giving you that wonderful transcendent pleasure. The study by Mayo clinic found in 18.4% of patients taking therapeutic dose of parkinsons drugs, hyper-sexuality and compulsive gambling, but none of these disorders were found in the parkinsons patients who were not being treated by these drugs.

This finding connects with literature and society because it is now blatantly obvious drugs can control change and determine who we are. In Brave New World central to the story is the drug soma which gives instant pleasure to the masses creating a blissed out conflict-free consensus which creates absolute conformity. But "Todays Brave New World will have a multitude of designer psychotropics" as neuroscientist Steven Rose says in his book 21st Century Brain. Today we have drugs which will make people more sexual, gamble and probably consume more. We have ritalin which offers to increase concentration on demand. Some drugs like LSD and mescaline are used to create religious experiences on demand. It seems our technological development is in part offering us technology which could create a dystopia which will surpass all of the previous generations wildest dreams. In America it seems Ritalin is already passed around schools and university campuses to improve performance. One wonders what happens if a drug company creates a hyper-memory, hyper-concentration drug which almost guarentees exam success?

These developments suggest what I have always thought when comparing the two great dystopias Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. While Nineteen Eighty-Four was more horrifying (and is today alive in North Korea), Brave New World was more subtle but will always be relevant to every society. Following this now is perhaps an opportunity for a new dystopia waiting in the wings. When Huxley was writing in the 1930s it was a transition where modernity was just coming into view. Now I think post-modernity seems to be coming just coming into view.

The World Below The Brine Poem analysis

The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick
tangle openings, and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the
play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes,
and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling
close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting
with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairysea-leopard, and the sting-ray,
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths,
breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do,
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed
by beings like us who walk this sphere,
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.

By Walt Whitman

(I'm shall we say unpracticed at poetry analysis more so than other english fields so forgive any silly mistakes)

The poem centres on a creating an image of a beautiful underwater sphere of life. Where there exists a kind of world or society with sharks and walruses, turtles an other sea creatures. These creatures are human-like and with a social structure which has "passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes."

I would suggest the poem is one of the first attempts at imagining other worlds or spheres different from our own. The final line 'The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres' is driving at this point. The poem was published 1860s before this idea of 'other spheres' got started. Today most obviously similar to the poem we have the realms of Nemo and Shark Tale about the realm of fish. But this idea also expands to the other world of science fiction where writers imagine aliens and entirely other universes eg. Star Wars.

The techniques used in expressing this other world in the poem characterise the new world making it feel calm, beautiful and peaceful. Whitman does this by making the poem free verse and and consistent rhythm so as reading we feel comfortable flowing smoothly through the verses. If Whitman wanted us to feel uncomfortable or scared of this different sphere he could have used a fast, jerky pace so we couldn't find any real rhythm. Also creating this feeling is Whitmans use of listing in almost every verse creating an image of so many different parts to this world. Using listing is effective in the poem because it is combined with the easy flowing rhythm mentioned above so we feel like we're smoothly surveying all the beautiful aspects of this other world.

In this poem Whitman seems to be reaching out to a future genre, perhaps like Capote reached out to the new genre of novelistic non-fiction. He makes a commendable effort of reaching out by carefully crafting a beautiful scene of a different sphere beyond our own.

Watched Capote

With intrepid curiousity I watched the movie Capote. Here was a famous writer I had only a whisper of contact with in another book. In an strange book I can barely remember the title, Immortality was in the title and the cover was purple, ahh thats right it was A Beginner's Guide to Immortality: Extraordinary People, Alien Brains, and Quantum Resurrection. Anyway again from the little I can remember it was a strange, strange, strange book which made my stomach swim but it did have an insight about Truman Capote. In the book (and Wikipedia will confirm) chameleons do not usually change their colour for camflouge, its more to do with temperature and communication. The book said Capote was this kind of chameleon, he was someone who changed his colour for the occasion and temperature, always luminously standing out and communicating to the world.

Throughout the film, we see Capote display exactly this characteristic. We see him the centre of attention with socialites, then changing to an empathetic centre of understanding when he and Harper Lee are interviewing a girl, finally we see him on the one hand friends and almost in love with the prisoner to wishing him to die. These colours as you probably ascertained are the different aspects of Truman Capote. The film creates a moving account because it reveals these subtle contradictions and complex emotions like a real human being. The actual film raw information is simple, dull, Capote goes around talking to people about these murders and then talking to the sensitive murderer about his life and feelings. The film is called Capote and thats what its really all about, giving us a sense of Capote and his complexities. Whether its a historically accurate sense of Capote is another question completely. I will seek to answer later when I read Capotes books as I think this is where much of the characater of a good writer is found.

Gatsby expansion on two themes

One of the major themes in the movie is the characterisation of the rich. The rich are personified by Daisy and Tom Buchanan. In the movie the rich are characterised as devoid of geniune love or emotion. We see this playing out with Daisy who although she initially seems to "love" Gatsby, when things go wrong and he dies she doesn't come to his funeral or even shed a tear. Tom similarly shows no grief when Myrtle dies. Following this characterisation we also see, how they use there money to absolve them of all responsibility. Tom says he will give George Wilson his car to make up for sleeping with Georges wife. I suppose this is similar to rich people today hiring a team of the best lawyers to exonerate them from any cases. Furthermore we are shown the rich only really care about their money and appearances. Interestingly we see this with Daisy as she really responds to Gatsby after seeing his massive mansion and reacted most positively when he throws all the latest fashion in the air and she looks positively thrilled.

Another major theme for the conflict between the newly rich and old more aristocratic rich. Gatsby represents the new rich as we find out through the film as lad he was poor. Tom Buchanan represented the old rich. The conflict T Buchanan vs Gatsby, old rich vs new rich plays out subtly at first but then explodes into the open throughout the film. The first subtle taste of it is Toms comments about Jay Gatsby calling him a 'bootlegger' which means he's thinks Gatsby smuggling. This explodes with Tom shouting out at a restaurant that he's discovered Gatsby is smuggling alcohol into his drug stores and selling it. Finally they contrast with ideals Gatsby believes in his true love for Daisy and Tom seems to be more with the old ideas of aristocrats being able to do what they want and in the right 'breeding.'

Merchant of Venice

In my holiday in Auckland I went to academy theatre and watched Merchant of Venice. I haven't seen or read the play before. One thing I usually hate in Shakespeare movies is set in a modern scenery, so the movie set in a stunningly accurate early Venice (beautiful in some places but also dark streets) attracted me instantley to the movie. But really every part of the movie was excellently performed.

While I knew of the general persecution of Jews throughout history by Christians as "Christ-killers" and Martin Luther writing the screed "On the Jews and Their Lies" I hadn't realised the full extent of their nazi-like persecution of Jews in Venice til this movie. It shows all Jews had to wear red hats to identify themselves (on pain of death) and were spat on and humiliated. Thus it has a sympathetic interpretation of Shylock who is shown more as a begrieved father who through personal tragedy becomes vengeful. A little dip into wikipedia reveals there is debate over whether Shakespeare intended Merchant to be anti-semitic. As almost everyone in his time was anti-semitic and unless I uncovered Shakespeare as a moral genius as well as a literary I would sugest he was anti-semitic but then Shylock has this speech:

"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

This is a speech I have to memorise its sheer beauty and anti-semitic message. Anti-semitism was the norm in Shakespeares society so perhaps he hopes to use Shylock as a Jewish caricature which most people were reasonably comfortable with then use this speech to send shockwaves to them to reconsider their judgement? Or another possibility, hes trying to send a message to the more enlightened secure in that the masses will fail to pick it up.

Watched Great Gatsby

Last night I watched the Great Gatsby. It was old movie based on the novel by Robert Fitzgerald. The central themes were the rise of the new rich and their relationship with the old rich after WWI, failure of true love and the horrible way the aristocratic classes treat the lower classes. It was a bit overacted as most old films seem to be but it still held your attention.

The main characters were:
Jay Gatsby the newly rich loverboy completely obsessed with Daisy, held society parties but didn't go. Shown as bit of a man of mystery. At start we are wondering how he made his fortune.
Daisy Buchanan: Gatsby great love who turns out to be a rich floozy, high society
Nick Carraway: cousin to Daisy who is an observer and narrator to events, lives next to Gatsby
Tom Buchanan: Husband of Daisy, bit of a rich prick
George Wilson: simple mechanic whos wifes Toms piece on the side. A poor man who lives in a industrial area. A billboard overlooks his house, a face with glasses on it. He referes to it when things go wrong, as God who sees everything.
Myrtle Wilson: Toms piece on the side, and wife of George Wilson. Through the film hopes to ingratiate herself with Tom and high society.

New blog yay!

Well we were supposed to start a blog for scholarship plus I seem to have caught a writing bug this holidays so I will grandly open my english blog. So a summation of reading for the last while I have the collected fiction works of George Orwell and so far have read Animal Farm and Burmese days (though I've read 1984 before) and become a Salman Rushdie fanatic and read Shalimar the Clown, Satanic Verses, and Beneath Her Feet. Also started on some of Christopher Hitchens books Love Poverty and War and Letters to a Young Contrarian. I will write more in depth about these books later on. One of my themes ofr reading novels will be dystopias and I will probably develop another one.