And from this testimony of your own sex,

Thinking back to my previous read, Under the Net, it dawned on me that there was something fairly unique about it, that being it featured a male protagonist but was written by a woman.  And this would be the same case the other way, a male author writing a female character; it doesn't happen very often.

Looking back at the 58 books I've read so far, I only see two other books that truly fit into this category.  Number 56, Death Comes for the Archbishop, was entirely about a man, written by Willa Cather, while Atonement centers around a young woman, written by Ian McEwan.  There may be a couple of others I suppose, as one could argue that Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky featured a female protagonist, but I would respond by saying that although Kit had the most 'screen' time, she wasn't the main character.  And while Lena Grove is quite central to Light in August, she takes a seat to some of the more powerful characters in that book.

Thinking about it, it makes sense this would be the case, as one tends to be more familiar with their own sex, and hence better able to write a character that shares that trait.  It reminds me of a great Hemingway quote about a writer being able to omit a lot of details, "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them."  While I think he was probably more talking about plot or settings, the same would apply to characters.  Naturally, a woman would know more about being a woman, which would show through her writing.

Of course this isn't to say that one can't write a character of a different gender, and there are no shortage of examples.  Atticus Finch is one of the giants of fiction, written by Harper Lee, ditto for Rhett Butler written by Margaret Mitchell.  But in neither case are they the central character of the book, no matter how important they were.

But I wonder why Under the Net made me think about this, when clearly there are other examples.  Never once do I remember pondering this question after finishing Atonement or Death Comes for the Archbishop.  I think the reason is that neither of those books featured a character I really enjoyed reading.  Jake Donaghue was one of my favorites so far and really sticks out in my mind, while the Archbishop and Briony do not.  In fact, I already don't remember the Archbishop's name (or if it was even given) and I'm not a hundred percent sure that Briony is correct (it is, but I had to look it up and probably wouldn't have remembered if I hadnt' found it such an odd name).

I also think the above Hemingway quote is bang on in this instance.  While Willa Cather was fascinated and well educated in the setting and time period in which she placed her novel, perhaps she wasn't as much an expert on the male psyche.  Conversely, I would never have guessed Under the Net was written by a woman, had that not been completely obvious from the cover and multiple other sources.  So many of Jake Donaghue's thoughts made me feel as if somebody understood how I thought things through.  Ironically this is what two people have told me was the reason they loved To the Lighthouse so much.  Perhaps that's why I didn't; I'm not a woman from the early 20th century.

As an update to my reading, Revolutionary Road is excellent.  And while there have been some rather intense moments, I haven't felt the need to use my cyanide pill yet.  However, I know things are going to turn for the worse, and the set-up is already there for it to be a complete nosedive (the mood, not the quality).

#43 - "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood

I suppose in a way, I'm now more Canadian than I was last week.  Why, you ask?  Because I've finished my first Margaret Atwood book, The Blind Assassin.  No doubt one of the most popular and most highly respected authors to come out of Canada, I think of it as some sort of rite of passage to have finally read one of her books.

I'm happy to report, it was one I truly enjoyed.  I say I'm happy I enjoyed it because of the two types of reactions I seem to encounter when I mention to fellow Canadians that I'm reading an Atwood book.  For the most part people say, 'oh, I really like her books' or something to that effect.  But others look like they just bit into a lemon as they same something like 'She's okay, but I'm not crazy about her..."  It's almost as if they don't want to say they don't like her because it might be considered unpatriotic.  Being the honest guy I am, I'd probably just say I didn't like her, and could then be accused of being a maple leaf-hating traitor.  But, I liked it, so I guess I'm safe from those accusations.

The Blind Assassin starts out with a series of newspaper clippings outlining a young woman's death in a car accident in 1945, her brother-in-law's death of a stroke in 1947, and her niece's death in 1975.  From there, the story begins with the birth of Iris Chase Griffen, the dead woman's sister, the brother-in-law's husband, and the niece's mother.  She narrates the story of her childhood in a wealthy family, her marriage, and in the end, her tragedy.  And tragedy is really what the story is, as she explains the details and events which lead to said deaths.

Iris is the only person left who knows the truth behind the deaths, and looks to set the story straight for her estranged granddaughter.  The book jumps from present to past frequently, as Iris talks of her life now, and the changes that she has experienced, then revisits her past to make sense of those changes.  The book also uses passages of a novel-within-a-novel entitled The Blind Assassin, which her sister became posthumously famous for writing, and tells the tale of a wealthy woman and her elicit affair with a local vagabond.

At times I find books that use time shifts like this to be confusing, as I did in Faulkner's Light in August, but Atwood's use of them is very accessible.  Instead of losing the reader, The Blind Assassin is able to hold their attention, and the technique is very adept at piecing the plot together.  I found it fun in a way to guess how the combination of stories from the past and the allusions in the novel-within-a-novel would turn out in the main story.

I also really enjoyed Atwood's writing style and her use of words.  She uses a lot of similies and metaphors, so many of which I found create really vivid descriptions.  Plus, she writes with a wit I wasn't expecting.  There were so many great lines in this book, many of which left me smiling, if not giggling.  My list-reading counterpart in Nashville, Robert Bruce, has assembled many of these lines in a recent post on his site, 101 Books.

This was truly an enjoyable read and I'll be sure to revisit Atwood in the future.  After I read the next 57 books from The List, that is.


Click here to read TIME magazine's review from September 11, 2000.

You can hear me talk about The Blind Assassin on the Calgary Eyeopener right here.


Notes: This is the only truly Canadian book on The List. Neuromancer was written by William Gibson who holds dual citizenship but was born and educated in the United States, and Saul Bellow was born in Montreal but moved to Chicago when he was nine years old.

As a funny aside, I noticed in Time's explanation for why this book made The List, they refer to the book's setting as 'a chilly Canadian town.' I never got the feeling it was really cold in the book, save a couple of mentions of snow or ice in the dead of winter, but nothing to make me think they lived in a particularly cold place, and certainly nothing worth noting. Perhaps it is assumed all Canadian towns are really cold. But then wouldn't that be redundant to mention it, like saying a book was set in a warm Hawaiian town?


Next up is still to be decided, but I'm leaning toward Malcolm Lowry's 1947 novel, Under the Volcano.

#31 - "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

When I began reading this novel, I have to admit I was a little worried it would be another Light in August.  That is to say I was worried I wouldn't like it; I was worried I would find it depressing.  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter isn't at all what I was expecting, and a read I very much enjoyed.

Set in the South, in the late thirties, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is more a commentary on the poor, uneducated South as a whole, instead of focusing on race relations as most books set in this time and place do.  Now that isn't to say race relations aren't an important subject, it is to say that I don't necessarily enjoy reading about it due to it's (rightfully so) depressing nature.

The story centers around a man named John Singer, a man who isn't of any real importance and who is really only notable for being a deaf-mute.  He lives in a boarding house in a small, unnamed town, works for a local jeweler and goes about his business day in and day out.  Over time, Singer's life becomes entangled with four different towns people, four people who enjoy talking to him, though he can't hear them.  They enjoy spilling their guts to him as if he were a living, breathing diary, and as each of these people tell him more and more, the more they come to not only appreciate his 'listenning', they need it.  When Singer leaves town to visit a friend, all four find themselves lost and worried.  Worried he may never return and they'll be left without somebody to air their grievances to.

But book is really about Singer's four friends and their lives in the rural South.  They deal with family problems, race relations, addiction, poverty and even puberty.  Singer, more or less a stranger even to the reader, is merely their common bond.  I think it is the characters, most of whom I found so interesting, that made it possible for such difficult subjects to be handled so well.  While there were bad things happening throughout the town, the characters the book focuses on were not bad themselves.  They were merely people caught up in that period,  prisoners of their surroundings.

Another element of the book I found fascinating was the social commentary offered.  Despite being written in 1940, before World War II and before the civil rights movement in the United States, the book makes some fairly bold, yet accurate predictions and may even be the origin of a rather historic event in that country's history.

The characters often discuss the happenings in Europe with Hitler and the Nazis, a subject that no doubt dominated the headlines in 1939.  And while the Nazis' persecution of the Jews was well known at the time, their ultimate fate was not.  Yet the book speaks of an eventual slaughter of the Jews, long before it happened and long before it was ever public knowledge.  And that persecution is then compared to the happening in the US, and the persecution of blacks, not only in the South but throughout the nation.

"The Nazis rob the Jews of their legal, economic and cultural life. Here the Negro has always been deprived of these. And if wholesale and dramatic robbery of money and goods as not taken place here as in Germany, it is simply because the negro has never been allowed to accrue wealth in the first place."

I have always found it ironic how books and movies about the war always talk of the struggle to liberate the people of Europe against the racial oppression from the Third Reich, but never do I see that perception pointed the other direction, where a similar persecution was occurring in the United States at the same time. During World War II, the US was a country where black people were not allowed to go to the movies, eat in restaurants and in many states were not allowed to vote. Segregation was the law of the land, and it divided all public institutions including schools, the military and public transportation.  The 'land of the free' was anything but for the nation's minorities, who suffered levels of persecution that are hard to fathom today.  But really, it was only a little over 40 years ago that you would find two different water fountains at many gas stations.

When two of John Singer's friends discuss this very persecution, they each offer their plan to end racial segregation and oppression in the South.  I was, simply put, blown away, when Mady Copeland,  a black doctor, tells of his plan to "lead more than one thousand Negroes in this country on a march.  A March to Washington.  All of us together in one solid body."  I can only wonder if Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963 was born from this book, twenty-five years earlier.  Not since Snow Crash and its' prediction of Google Maps has there been are more accurate foretelling of the future in a book from The List.  And I'd argue this one was a little more significant.

You can read Time Magazine's original review from June 10, 1940 right here.
 


Next up is Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, the story of the fire-bombing of Dresden during the Second World War.  While I've heard of Vonnegut's novels, I've never read any of them, and don't really know what to expect.  I do know that Vonnegut was hired to tutor Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School," but other than that, I'm at a loss.

#14 - "The Power and the Glory" by Graham Greene

I was able to finish The Power and the Glory last night, making that four books in June.  Actually, I finished the book at about 2:00AM, but I'm going to consider that being finished in June.

I found the first few chapters of this book very difficult to immerse myself in.  I don't know if I'm just not that smart or what, but I found the beginning to be quite confusing.  At one point, I wondered if I had missed a page or something.  Or perhaps I had drifted off, where your brain is elsewhere, but your eyes continue to scan across the page.  I hadn't felt this lost since reading Light in August.

Eventually, things began to come together and the pieces started falling into place, but I still can't get over how confusing I found this at the start.  Is it supposed to be read that way?  Or am I finding it difficult to get into any book after just having finished a different one?  When I had started Atonement, I still had the Lambert family from The Corrections in my head, and found any new character to be almost a distraction to my involvement with them.  I have to learn to do a better job of wiping the slate clean, and remembering I'm reading a new book.

The Power and the Glory is the story of an unnamed priest, wandering the Mexican countryside to avoid prosecution. Set in the 1930's in Mexico, while the government was in the process of suppressing religion, making worship illegal and executing any religious figures including priests and bishops, the story follows an unnamed priest as he roams the countryside trying to avoid prosecution.

As the nameless priest moves from village to village, being chased by a Lieutenant and his posse, he slowly feels the pinch of the law, as they move in closer and closer, surrounding the priest.  While he is a self-described "whiskey priest", basically a drunk and a bad priest, he is still devoted to his faith.  Unable to resist the urge to quench the people's thirst for religious guidance, he must decide whether or not to sacrifice his own freedom to enhance the lives of the people he encounters.

The story did gain momentum, and in the end, I was quite engrossed with the fate of the priest.  As the posse slowly moves in, and he resigns himself to his demise, I felt myself felling compassion for not only the man, but also the religion; something I'm not known for.

While I enjoyed the read, it doesn't really stick out in my mind, and I wouldn't be picking it for my favorite books yet.  In fact, this will find itself closer to the bottom, along with Naked Lunch and Light in August.

My next book will be To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.  Again, I know nothing about it, other than Elizabeth Taylor was in a movie called "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"  I'll assume the two have something in common.

Second edition: he will print them, out of doubt

I was thinking today about my earlier idea of one day owning all 100 novels. So far, I've checked eight out from the library, borrowed two from a friend, and own a copy of one. I probably won't read 95 of them ever again, but it could serve as a sort of trophy case for having read through the list.

As I day dreamed about the possibilities of owning all 100, my vision became quite clear. A tall mahogany shelf, lined with leather-bound copies of each book, all being embraced by the beam of a single lamp overhead. I think of it as something you'd find in an Agatha Christie mystery, lining the room where the guests all meet to sip brandy and talk about the recent murder. As they discuss who done it, and lightning flashes through the floor-to-ceiling windows, while thunder rattles the lamps which light the room.

Of course I don't have a Victorian-era mansion, and most likely never will. The bookshelf however, still might be a possibility. In order to fill the shelf, I did some on-line research to check the availability of first editions of some of these books. Looking on The Manhattan Rare Book Company website, I was able to find over half the books I've read so far. Unfortunately, as easy as they were to find, it appears they will be equally as difficult to finance. I found a first edition of Beloved, signed by Toni Morrison, for only $600. A first edition copy of Light in August can be had for $6500 and The Great Gatsby for $6800. The most shocking however, was the price of a first edition copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which can be yours for the bargain price of $17,500!

I've decided to return to the goal of simply having a copy of each book on my shelf, be it the first edition or the 500th edition. They can be paperbacks for all I care.

I must become a borrower of the night

I'm heading out of town for a few days tomorrow and as I'm almost finished Tropic of Cancer, I thought I'd better hit the library up for a couple more novels before I leave. The last thing I want is to be on the road or waiting at the airport, without a book to read; especially after making such good progress in the past month.

I decided to continue reading novels I've never heard of and novels I know nothing about. Mostly because I'm going to have to read them sooner or later, so why not now? But also, it makes me feel like I'm broadening my horizons. When I tell people I just finished The Catcher in the Rye, most have already read it, usually in high school, and don't think my finishing it as any great accomplishment. But when I tell someone I read Light in August they seem more impressed. Okay, actually I've yet to meet anybody who's heard of Light in August, but most have heard of it's author, William Faulkner. They all seem impressed with Faulkner, despite nobody seeming to know anything about him. If you're reading this, and are one of the few who know a lot about William Faulkner, click here.

Anyway, back to the library, I ended up picking up three novels from the list. First is Atonement by Ian McEwan, of which I'm told there was a movie recently, but I know nothing about either the book or the movie, so it fits my qualifications. Second, was Midnight's Children, which the only thing I know about it is that its' author was the subject of a fatwa in the 1980's and 90's for one of his other novels, The Satanic Verses, being insulting to Islam. The third book I picked up was The Corrections by Johnathan Franzen. I just happened to walk by this on the shelf and remembered it from the list. I was actually heading to find I, Claudius, which was most likely one shelf over.

Again, I'm not sure why I've picked up three books from the library. I'm not even finished Tropic yet and I'm picking up three more books. At my current rate, I won't be finished these three until sometime in late 2018. I guess I should be only checking out one book at a time, but then again, who's this hurting?

For what I have I need not to repeat

I'm now back in Calgary, my Egyptian odyssey over. It was a great trip, with lots to see and do. However, the best part I guess, was that I finished two books and started a third, all in two weeks. Okay, Light in August took almost a month to read, but you get the idea.

On my flight from London to Calgary, I started my sixth book on the list, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I originally read this book in high school, and enjoyed it thoroughly. As I've said earlier, I'm not sure why I've spent the last ten years avoiding fiction, as I usually enjoy most of the books I read.

So, this will mark the second book in a row I've read, that I'd already read before starting the list. These were supposed to be ready about every fifteen to twenty books, but I've needed to make up all the time lost from Light in August and Naked Lunch, so I'm already in reruns. But it's only two books, and then I can get back to the fresh material.

#4 - "Light in August" by William Faulkner

I've finished my fourth book from the list; finally. I'm currently in my hotel room in Cairo and the city is alive following what seems to be a pretty big win for the Egyptian soccer team over rival Algeria. The game was the semi-final of the Africa Cup, and is taken quite seriously by the locals. Walking the streets earlier this evening, every shop with a TV had a small crown of men around watching the game on the edge of their seats; or I guess the edge of their...feet.

Near the end of the first half, Egypt scored the game's first goal, sending the people in the streets into a frenzy. There was screaming, hugging, honking, and flashing lights. When I would stop at a shop and watch some of the game, I'd receive a series of confused looks, and then get asked who I was pulling for. Not caring one way or another, I'd of course answer Egypt, and then receive a pat on the back and invitation to get closer to the TV.

I suppose the atmosphere is much the same as during a hockey game in Canada, except without alcohol. Seems a little weird. People in Canada don't usually get so wound up about a sporting event without the help of a few drinks! Now that the game is over, and Egypt prevailed 4-0, the honking and cheering can be heard throughout the city.


Back to the book, I did finish Light in August earlier in the day, fulfilling my vow to do so before I returned to Canada, which I do tomorrow. I'm still not sure what I t

hink about this book. On the one hand the story is interesting, and the themes Faulkner explores are relevant even today, but I still found it so confusing and slow at times, that I don't know what to think.

The story takes place in the racially divided South in the 1920's and follows a couple of different story lines which naturally become intertwined in the end. Lena Grove is a

poor white girl, searching for the father of her soon to be born child. Joe Christmas is man of uncertain heritage (he's of mixed blood), searching for his place in the world; a world that doesn't look kindly upon people who are different. Neither one of them fit into the Southern society, and both are in a way, outcasts. As the story evolves, the deeply ingrained prejudice of the South rears its ugly head, leading to the destruction of several people within the small town that serves as the setting for the story.

Now that I've finished the book, I do find the constant time shifts used throughout less confusing, as I can piece together the entire story and put it into a more linear context. But the jumping from different times and different places, what Time magazine describes as "outside the zone of normal chronology," was just too confusing for me, and often distracted from the excellent story. I wonder if I am alone in this thought, and am simply "not getting it." Faulkner is considered to be one of the great American writers of the last century and his books are critically acclaimed, but maybe I prefer the fluffier reads like The Da Vinci Code. Hopefully reading through this list allows me to expand my literary understanding, and through time I will learn to love a book like this, having a greater appreciation for it's brilliance.


You can read Time Magazine's original review from October 17, 1932, here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,744655-1,00.html

Leaving for Canada tomorrow morning, I'm going to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Hopefully I'm able to finish it on the plane. It's pretty short and I'm familiar with the story, so it shouldn't be a problem.

My boat sails freely, both with wind and stream.

I'm currently sitting in the "library" aboard the MS Prince Abbas, as we approach Aswan, Egypt from the South. The library consists of about thirty books scattered on shelves with room for five hundred books. Most of them are in English, some in German, some in Arabic. They tend to be about Egypt, and many look to be quite outdated. I guess not a lot of people are coming here to find a great book. As far as reading goes however, it's a nice place to come at night as it's as far away from the engines as possible, making it one of the quieter places on the ship. It's also the only place on the boat with an Internet connection, so here I am.

I have been able to get some reading in, albeit not as much as I had thought. Usually our mornings are spent visiting different temples, while our afternoons are spent cruising down Lake Nasser. While it isn't that warm, it's sunny, and it's nice to sit on the sun deck and get a little reading in. There's a certain romanticism in reading on the top deck of a boat that is sailing down what is essentially the Nile river. It seems so 19th century to me for some reason. Or something an ex-pat writer from the early 20's might have been doing so many years ago.

Progress on Light in August is still slow, but I vow to finish it before I return to Canada.

I conjure thee but slowly;

The struggles I experienced reading Naked Lunch are haunting me again with Light in August. The story often moves at a snail's pace, and I find myself drifting into la-la land quite often. This makes progress on the book slow, but I keep plugging away.

I'm leaving on a trip to Egypt tomorrow evening to see the sights of a 5000 year old civilization. My progress is so slow on the list right now, I'm thinking it might take me the same amount of time to finish this list. I starting think I should have picked something else to read after Naked Lunch, as the rate I'm going, it's going to take me two months to finish two books, which if my math is correct, will mean it'll take me eight years to finish this. So, maybe not the 5000 year horizon, but still pretty slow!

My trip to Egypt will involve a lot of time on a boat, as we head down the Nile, visiting the sights. That should allow me some time do to do some reading, and maybe play a little catch up. I know I won't have that much time, what with the tour and all, but I'm sure there will be some down time.

Besides taking Light in August with me, I've also decided to take a couple of books with me that I've already read. Since I have The Great Gatsby checked out from the library right now, I'm taking that. As well, I'm going to take the only complete book I own from the list, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump

I’ve put a good dent in Light in August but it isn’t going as quickly as I’d like. The story, at times, seems interesting, and the same goes for the characters. However, and I’ve confirmed this through some secondary reading, Faulkner likes to jump around in time, so the book isn’t told in chronological order. At times I think this can work, like in ‘Pulp Fiction,’ but I’m finding it’s causing some problems for me here.

Every time the story starts to build some momentum, I find it gets derailed by one of these shifts. All the sudden, Faulkner is writing about different characters in a different time and a different place. I also found out through a little research that I’m not the only one who finds this technique a little confusing. Apparently, this is one of Faulkner’s least confusing works. That kind of scares me for his other book on the list. Will it be more confusing? Maybe I’ll be smarter by then because of all the reading I’ve done.

A New Year, a new book

My first entry of 2010, and the first entry since I turned 31, which was yesterday. I’m starting to get old. Okay, I'm not that old, but I do find myself starting to think about aging more now than ever. Fortunately I'm as mature as a fifteen year old, so life continues at a good pace.

I went to the library today, and was hoping to pick up Animal Farm. However, it had been checked out, so I walked the stacks of the local library, until I spotted a book I was sure was on the list. The first one I came across was Light in August by William Faulkner. I don’t really know anything about this book either, which I guess I might as well not mention, as that will be the case with most of the books on this list. I recognize the name William Faulkner, but I don’t know anything about him, nor could I name any of his books. I do know that he has two books on the list, the other one being The Sound and the Fury.

Anyway, I’ve checked this book out as well as The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird; both books I have read. My plan is to read Light in August and then one of the other books. I had only previously read six of the novels on this list, and I don’t want to go into re-runs too soon. So, I’ll read one of these two when I’m finished Light in August to kind of get me a head a little bit, which is necessary after Naked Lunch took so long to read.