Like girls in general, I love flower. I think they are pretty and no one should ever hurt them. I hate when people step on flowers and I think I’m pretty idiotic.

Other than their beautiful look, people say flowers are meaningful, like you can use it for communication. I read somewhere years ago that yellow rose has something to do with betrayal and a single red rose mean I love you. White yellow would represent something about purity…of course. I know that in the USA and some other countries, people give carnations to their mommies, while in Thailand we give jasmine. Well, I don’t really care about flower language.

The other day, though, my friend and I took two American friends of an American friend of my sister on a tour around Bangkok. Our last stop was at Pak Klong Talad, the biggest flower market in South East Asia (from what I’ve heard). The girl really enjoyed looking at flowers while the boy didn’t really care (of course). When we walked passed a shop that sold thousands of beautiful carnation, the girl said to me, “I really like carnation. It’s a flower of friendship.” Minutes later, she surprised me and my friend with one bunch of red and one bunch of pink carnation. The boy said it was a mutual gift to thank us for showing them around Bangkok.

On her facebook she said that I and my friend are strangers-turned-to-friends.

I don’t remember what was the last time some flowers were really meaningful to me.

Lastly, I would like to talk about what flower, I think, represent me. I think it’s sunflower. At first I like it because it looks happy and bright just like me (sometimes). But after I read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, I find that I really am like sunflower. In Greek Mythology, there is this water nymph named Clytie who fell in love with Apollo (the handsome god who rode Sun chariot and was always broken hearted). Apollo didn’t love her back but Clytie loved him enough to sit in one place all day just to look at him, turning her head slowly. After a very long time, she became sunflower.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

The other haiku anthology I reviewed is Classic Haiku, located here.

This is the second haiku anthology that I’ve reviewed on my site. While they’re both thin volumes of traditional haiku, each has its distinct flavor. The previous volume was organized by season. This one is organized by author. The two books share several authors (e.g. the greats Bashō, Issa, and Buson), but diverge on many of the lesser known poets.

One nice feature of this book is that it offers multiple translations of many of the haiku. Poetry is notoriously tricky to translate as literal translations can be meaningless. Multiple translations can give one a better opportunity to hone in on what the author meant to convey. This volume does give the original Japanese poem in romanized transcription (for those who enjoy the sound the author conveyed as well as meaning), but–unlike the other volume–it does not include the kanji. (This doesn’t matter for me, as I don’t read Japanese, but I’m sure the kanji is a nice feature for readers of Japanese.)

Some favorites are:

clouds occasionally
make a fellow relax
moon-viewing
Matsuo Bashō

islands
shattered into a thousand pieces
in the summer sea
Matsuo Bashō

you’re the butterfly
and I the dreaming heart
of Sōshi
Matsuo Bashō

[Note: Sōshi is the Japanese name of the Taoist thinker Chuang Tze, and this references his famous statement about having dreamt he was a butterfly.]

that dream I had
of being stabbed–was true
bitten by a flea
Takarai Kikaku

oh, won’t some orphaned sparrow
come
and play with me
Kobayashi Issa

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Nestled between an 11th century church at the top of the lane, and an ancient ford at the bottom, there stands a stone cottage. It has a slightly crooked front door framed by an open porch. Blue-tits nest in the porch eaves – content and undisturbed – as the door, now swollen with the paintwork of many generations, is too stiff to open. The door is painted a delicate shade of green with an unconscious nod towards a French manor house. Casement windows sit in perfect symmetry on either side of the doorway – just as a child would draw – and an exquisite flower border, heady with sweet aroma, is bedded down under the front windows.  It is a cottage that sits so comfortably in its position, surrounded by rolling Devonshire hills, wild flower meadows and twinkling streams, only a flash of Divine inspiration could have created it.”

Chapter Three, The Wedding Cake Tree

Sure as a die hard fan of Fitzgerald masterwork, I was let down by the portrayal of Daisy and Jordan to a certain extent but I understand one cannot be a purist to enjoy Gatsby as film without separating it from the novel itself as the film is an interpretation and what an interpretation it is mixing the 1920′s Jazz age era of prohibition with hip-hop electronic dance music soundtrack and some interesting alterations that I shall remain silent about… except for one element and that is the fact that Tobey Maguire cast as Nick Carraway was no accident as Nick narrator writes about Gatsby in a sanitarium much like Fitzgerald himself wound up in a sanitarium for his alcoholism and please note the resemblance of the actor to the author as the actor pretends to be an author. There is also a wonderful little subplot regarding Walter Chase of the infamous Chase Manhattan Bank) being in debt to bootleggers.

The film is like reading the book again for the very first time, in which one learns about the stories beneath the lovely and transfixing prose and between the pages of the narration itself. It is an artistically rendered time machine of a golden age that never existed, where everyone is beautifully airbrushed to fashion magazine perfection and the sex is always hot even when not portraying flesh against flesh and as a consequence everyone is thirsty to escape reality and get a taste of the permissive sin of paradise through crystal clear martini’s and the ceaseless bubbles of popped champagne bottles.

Never have I left a movie with the words “Wow” on my breath without a criticism of any sort following it. Gatsby was cinematic perfection, expertly cast and took chances where the genre needed to take such chances regarding art and the interpretation of literary works.

It follows the novel perfectly and deviates in places with stylistically rendered modern imagery where it needs to retain audience attention and delivers the impact at the most precise moment in which the mind is ready to rest or wander and then revelations are garnered.

It would be a great disservice to the performers who played the roles of the their characters to be acknowledged by me for such a pristine portrayal of literary characters for these were not performers but the words of Fitzgerald made flesh projected on a giant screen in various regions of the world for a diverse amount of factions of the global populace to behold.

It is the movie that reads like a book with an ocean of sacred prose flooding the soul.

How does one begin to describe enlightenment. It seems so simple, yet the words elude me.

Well I’ll try to start the only way I know:shakily. Just bare with me.

I’ve figured out why characters speak to me louder than the people around me. Just to be specific, let’s talk Enjolras and Grantaire, for they are my enigmatic sun and moon.

Why do I spend near every waking moment thinking about them? About how they exist in relation to the other? About their similarities? Their differences? About how real tangible people can relate to them? About how I can connect them to real people?

They are, to me the perfect complimentary pair. It boggles my mind and in the realm of my thoughts, they have transcended to a state of being far beyond the character, the mortal man, or even the god.

They are no longer people.

They are ideas.

It took a long and confusing shower (I somehow shampoo’d four times) for me to come to this conclusion.

Before, my mind struggled to classify people in my life as sharing more qualities with either Enjolras or Grantaire. Seeing things in black and white is always hard, so I then allowed myself to blur the lines.

That’s when things get tricky. More similarities appear than were first visible. For example, both E and R are disillusioned. There is the man of light who is eternally trusting of the people he leads and the future he hopes to bring, while the man of dark believes that the world is just screwed up and everything sucks (except for that one guy winky face).

They have similarities but even those are founded on different ideals.

And you can’t even pin them to representing something. You can’t say Enjolras is the good in people, because that would make Grantaire the bad and while he’s flawed, he has his noble times. You can’t say Grantaire represents the weakness of man because that would make Enjolras strength or perhaps a god, yet he has flaws and dies just as easily as anyone else.

They are indescribable.

And that is why I love them. They embody opposites that aren’t quite opposites.

And this is one of the things that has given me clarity. I’m not in love with two fictional characters, I’m in love with the idea of them. And they are just ideas, so it creates a loop.

I’m not just a petty girl obsessing over guys who, in my minds eye (but not actually the story lol) are pretty, but I’m trying to always fit two identical puzzle pieces into two two spaces for them which are dissimilar.

I’m in love with ideas.

And yet I’m still in love with them.

~phan

*wow if anyone in the world actually read that, have a cookie*

**next time on WHY PHAN WILL NEVER OBTAIN A MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIP… the issue of voluntarily crushing my own dreams! a topic which hasn’t been brought up since the second month of this blog’s existence! Wow! Stay tuned**

to spear and dissect what exactly needs to be identified.

we are too many branches extending green tendrils of evolution falsely accused of the intent to overwhelm.

it cannot be helped.

forced to adapt and abandon what is no longer functionally necessary

‘look (t)here is the truth.’

memory has lost its function in the face of fact forced upon us in boxed glass

not unlike the blunted edge of grass holding a pair of frames so a Monet tree would turn its back on the sun and

find curvatures of rhythm dripping from end to end of sacrifice.

the truth is I am fighting the urge always

to box

you in

my eye is a

color: unclassified.

====

*note: this is the fourth in a series of six poems written in and about New York.
all photos taken by the amazing Rachelle Tai

So English…I’ve been learning English ever since I was born despite the fact that I am not a native speaker of Engish. My first English word was Sorry (pronounced “jo-yee”) and this is according to my mom since I was too young to remember anything.

Up until now my English skills is not even close to native…I would probably score like…hardly 7 on an IELTS test, but people around me kind of admire me for having “very good” English skills. They ask me how do I learned English, which cram school did I go to. Well, I never took extra classes for English. It’s that when my mom and dad fought, they spoke English and that made me very curious. So that’s the motivation.  Also my mom, she read English books to me almost everyday. We only watched soundtrack movies. She played John Denver music. She was very serious when it came to phonics. She would pronounce every single sound in a word and made me very uncomfortable, especially when she pronounced that word N-U-C-L-E-A-R. Anyway, I have always loved English ever since.

Why do I love English, though? Probably because my mom said that it is a useful language that will take me everywhere I want to go whether in books or in real life. Probably because my mom said this is the tool that would open the door to most knowledge in this world. Probably because I loved Walt Disney, Harry Potter, and Country Road. Probably because my English made special and outstanding especially at school.

When I went to the USA, the school I attended made me take 12th grade English. I had to memorized difficult words supposingly for SAT. But the worst part were the literature I had to read. The one that surprised me most was Beowulf. I never thought of English as an old language before. Other than Beowulf and all the crazy literature I had to read, English got me an Argentinian friend who was totally hot. And that’s how I started to learn Spanish and finally took Spanish Major two years later…not because I like Spanish more but because I loved English so much I didn’t want to suffer with it plus I was sure I would never forget or stop learning English.

Walden Books, 38 Harmood Street, London, NW1 8DP

Covered in beautiful purple flowers and the overspill of vines from the house next door, Walden Books is an inconspicuous fairy tale cottage hiding on a quiet residential street in Chalk Farm, a refuge just moments away from the noise and confusion of Camden Lock Market.

Outside, inexpensive fiction and poetry books draw wanderers in for a quick browse through the books outside on the terrace. The brave or curious venture further, into the bookshop itself.  The little brass bell that announces the entrance of a customer probably only rings a dozen times a day, so the shop attendant will notice you.  He’s a lovely, friendly man who waved me through to the back room without having to surrender my bag. I’m shocked but delighted to learn that I don’t look like the kind of person who’s going to steal books.  Luckily, I got the chance to browse through the small, cramped shop privately, with only one other customer arriving as I was on my way out.

The front room has antiquarian books and a whole bay full of secondhand books about London, ranging from the recent to the antiquarian and covering different areas of the city.  Sneaking past the till, I squeezed into the small back room.  For the limited amount of space, Walden Books has an impressive selection of secondhand books.  Books are everywhere, organised horizontally, vertically and diagonally.  For the most part they are actually in vague alphabetical order (miraculously), but there are some who spill off the shelves and huddle on the floor at their feet.  The large column in the middle (covered by books) makes the room feel more cramped, but provides a little bit of privacy so that browsers can hide in corners surrounded by the smell of paper and imagine that they’re completely alone.  In these quiet corners, the browser will find fiction and poetry as well as a huge selection of plays.  Normally, when you ask to be directed to the drama section, you encounter one shelf.  Fifty percent of it is occupied by William Shakespeare.  He’s absolutely brilliant, of course, and deserves his spot in all of our hearts and on all of our shelves, but has drama not progressed at all in the last 400 years?  Answer me, Waterstones!!  The other half will be filled with various copies of A Streetcar Named Desire, Doctor Faustus, Death of a Salesman and, if you’re lucky, an Ibsen or two.  It’s all very limiting and predictable.  But at Walden Books, the plays – dug up from some very interesting people’s attics, I have no doubt – represent a huge range of time periods, cultures and genres.  Even if you don’t buy anything, it’s worth going  and browsing around just to get some new ideas in your head.  I have a little red notebook that I carry around with me whenever I go into bookshops to write down the names of books and authors I discover.  The list is so long now that I’ll probably never get through them all, but for some reason writing them down makes me feel one step closer to having read them.

A whole wall of the middle column is dedicated to poetry.  Again, it’s refreshing to see variety rather than the one typical one bay dominated by Keats, Shelley, T.S. Eliot and Carol Ann Duffy.  Again, all are brilliant, but there’s so much more out there!  My favourite discovery in Walden’s today was a copy of Ezra Pound’s Selected Poems.  It felt slightly serendipitous since just the other day I almost got sucked into buying a book of Pound’s translations of Chinese poetry for £4 at the Southbank Book Market.  The best thing about it was that someone had tucked a clipping from the Times in April 1970 into the front of the book.  The clipping contained a poem by Pound which I think was called ‘The Pigeons’ which I have mysteriously not been able to find mention of anywhere else.  Is anyone able to illuminate? Whenever see something stuck in a secondhand book, I can’t help but wonder what the thought process of the bookseller is when s/he finds it.  Does it cross his/her mind to throw it in the bin, as the refuse of an older reader, of does it get to stay in because it adds to the value of the book?  I sincerely hope it’s the latter.

Apologies for blurriness. And my generally terrible photography.

Other areas covered on the shelves of Walden Books are local history, philosophy (and it’s a fantastic selection by the way), fiction, natural history, sociology and anthropology.  I came very close to buying and 1959 edition of Frazer’s The Golden Bough, the anthropological study of mythology and religions upon which T.S. Eliot based many parts of The Waste Land.  For those who aren’t familiar with my obsession with Eliot, suffice it to say that I think of my life in terms of ‘before I read The Waste Land‘ and after.  The book was only £5 and had a lovely inscription on the inside front cover – ‘To Kate, on your 17th birthday.’

Despite the clutter, the confusion, the awkwardness of being one of two strangers in a very small space and the unorthodox collection of books, there is something beautiful about Walden Books.  It’s messy, scattered, dusty and dingy.  It’s madness, yet there is method in’t.  It is full of a chaotic promise, that if you have the patience to sit and look, turn pages and inspect overleaves, you too can be part of something magical.  It doesn’t have the sanitary neatness of a chain bookshop or – worse – of your Kindle’s ‘library’ if we must use the word, but it has something infinitely better.  It reminds us of the simple beauty of a row of old books and the promises they make to anyone brave enough to pick them up.

]]> http://feathersproject.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/ije-enu/ Sun, 12 May 2013 10:35:43 +0000 feathersproject http://feathersproject.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/ije-enu/ http://writingenglishes.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/entry-58-the-secret-book/ Sun, 12 May 2013 08:22:02 +0000 bookclover http://writingenglishes.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/entry-58-the-secret-book/ This entry is dedicated to someone (eminent? Astonishingly clever? Incredibly charming? … well, a human being, after all) who has the power to intrude my mind in ways I have never imagined existed. Luckily, he will never read it.

He came up with the idea of lending one of his books…without telling title, author, publisher…anything other than “I’ve got this book, am willing to lend it to anyone in our circle of “friends” interested in reading it”. But you, have to find a decent-enough reason to convince me to add your name to the list.

“decent-enough “: easier said than done…

Curiosity…is that enough? [Not at all]

Your secret book can save my life?!…[unfortunately I’m not even in danger that would have never worked!]

I know someone who read a book you suggested and found the cure to cancer… [well, as much as he likes compliments, this would have not worked because it does sound fake and, unfortunately, he knows I would never tell him something I do not think, not even to please him.]

Well, to cut a long story short I ended up looking for inspiration in quotes from famous writers. And I did find some amazing – am going to post them here every now and then – but truth is they did not fit the description or, rather, my idea of what he expected me to tell him. In  general, I think he wants something creative, and original and up to very high standards: his. Basically, it is impossible to succeed and I began to feel like one of the two monks in Eco’s book, you know the one half written in Latin, The name of the Rose (I think there are Sean Connery and Christian Slater in the movie which dates back to the ‘80s or something). They need to find who’s killing their fellow monks in the shortest of times but when another one dies, unexpectedly, it just feels so hard, emotionally-speaking.

And what about the first novel from Carlos Luis Zafon?

I surely am not the lucky winner. But I did win something: I tried. Besides, every book, not only his, has and is a secret. I have learnt something new, about myself or others or life, every single time I got my hands on a  “new” book or got back to my “old” ones  -as naïve as it may sound I do re-read Little Women and Pride and Prejudice every year -.

Ps: if you can come up with an idea, please let me know.

Thank you for letting me re-discover parts of you this recently. This enriching experience has, however, occasioned twinges of regret for abstaining from acquaintance with you at university (this is colloquially known as ‘blowing you off’, ‘snubbing you’ or ‘giving you the cold shoulder’).

Your subject ‘Contemporary Australian Literature’ enticed me. But I was repelled by the thought of rushing through such delicacies (‘A book a week?! That’s crazy!’); unable to savour their unique taste. I was also uncertain about whether I could avoid plays – sorry to offend those members of your family. I decided to pursue my love of analysis through political science and history. In a sense, I searched for living water in other wells.

But oh literature I do like you. Your carefully constructed words laden with meaning and imbued with emotion. Or seemingly flung – discordant and haunting – onto the page but with pattern and form floating almost imperceivable underneath.

I love how you compel a myriad of readings that are then spun into impassioned essays: Marxist, post-structuralist, feminist, post-colonialist, psychoanalytic. Your interlocutors are rarely detached and distant. If we’ve taken the time to converse with you then you’ve probably engaged, enraged or invaded us. Your expressions have coalesced with our own to move us somewhere unexpected. Unlike a tidy formula in a political science journal, you speak to the universal and particular of human experience.

And yet you construct meaning as we construct our readings of you. The dynamic interplay of reader and text, meaning and interpretation is unceasingly re-formed and shaped. You grow as we grow, and change as we change. New spaces within culture, time and geography extend you, but there you remain: your neat black text just waiting to be unravelled in a new way.

My favourites sit quietly upon my shelf. Each is attached to memories, places and people – it seems that no book (even in a library) is an island. It’s a delight to see my housemate discovering many of your treasures. Her delight at compelling narratives reignites mine. In contrast, thus far my bulky tomes of history inform me, but they don’t often move me. They change my thoughts but largely leave my heart stagnate and languishing (n.b. Reformation and Post-Reformation church history may be an exception to this, but we’ll see).

So, to summarise: literature, I’m sorry for deserting you. We got on so well in year eleven and twelve where you drew me in with pensive T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath poetry, contemporary Australian works by Hannie Rayson, Tim Winton and Louis Nowra and surprisingly even Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Though you failed to nurse my interest during your Judith Wright period (sorry, I just couldn’t get into veiled references to the Vietnam War through nature-based analogies, perhaps because I’ve never been able to appreciate the sensory delights of nature in the same way as Wright); the amazing metaphors within The Great Gatsby, Donnie Darko and A Streetcar Named Desire re-kindled my appetite.

Thanks again.

Your Hosea’s Wife,

Elizabeth.

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Esther Summerson is raised by an austere woman whom she later learns was her aunt. Upon the death of this aunt, a gentleman whom Esther has never met, the charitable Mr. John Jarndyce, undertakes to provide for her. She is placed at a boarding school where she remains until she is nineteen or twenty and then goes to live with Mr. Jarndyce as a companion for his ward, Miss Ada Clare. Ada, her cousin Richard Carstone (another ward of Mr. Jarndyce’s), and Esther all arrive at Mr. Jarndyce’s home (the titular Bleak House) together. They live happily there for some time thanks to Mr. Jarndyce’s generosity. Eventually, however, Richard (or Rick, as he is usually called) falls under the spell of “the family curse”, the Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which Mr. Jarndyce had sought to protect him from. Rick, like many of the family before him, destroys himself by pinning his hopes on receiving a fortune from the settlement of the case and justice from Chancery.

Another part of the story follows the discovery of Esther’s parentage. Mr. Guppy, an admirer of Esther, in an effort to recommend himself to her, begins to sleuth out her past. He falls short of discovering anything certain himself, but manages to reveal to Lady Dedlock that Esther is her daughter. Before her marriage to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Honoria Dedlock had had an affair with a Captain Hawdon. Her sister, Miss Barbary, felt irretrievably disgraced by this. When Honoria gave birth to Captain Hawdon’s child, Miss Barbary took the little girl and told Honoria that she had died. She then parted from her sister and raised the child in secrecy, trying to make the child atone for her mother’s sins. “For yourself, unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon your head, according to what is written. … Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it.  You are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and wrath.  You are set apart.” (Ch. 3). Bit by bit, the whole history is uncovered by various people, and ends in tragedy.

Lady Dedlock and Miss Barbary were neither of them good women. There were very similar in character — proud, haughty, obstinate, passionate, stern, selfish. What a pair! Esther erroneously believed her aunt to be a good woman — “She was so very good herself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown all her life.  I felt so different from her … I felt so poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never could be unrestrained with her—no, could never even love her as I wished.  It made me very sorry to consider how good she was and how unworthy of her I was” (Ch. 3). It is suggested that Lady Dedlock has hidden depths of tenderness, “[b]ut she had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion out a legion of fine ladies” before she became Sir Leicester’s wife, and though she might have been more loving to her child than her sister was, I don’t think that she would ever have been a devoted mother. She was a selfish woman. She had plenty of opportunities to do good, she had a husband who was devoted to her, yet she chose to be constantly bored, as if nothing was good enough for her.

Esther herself narrates the bulk of Bleak House. She is a kind, industrious, sensible, dutiful, loving, and, despite her protestations to the contrary, perceptive young woman. Her narration suffers unfortunately from her over-modesty. Despite her other virtues, Esther is not forthright, and is lacking in self-knowledge. As a child, Esther realized that her aunt did not want her. Esther does her best to be good, to earn the affection of those around her, which, after her aunt’s death, she consistently does. She still feels at a disadvantage, however — a circumstance exacerbated by her face becoming scarred after a serious illness later in the story. It is through Esther’s eyes that we view Mr. Jarndyce’s generosity, Rick and Ada’s love story, and the duplicity of various characters (such as Harold Skimpole and old Mr. Turveydrop).

Esther is obsessed by her looks, and believes others so superficial as to be as much affected by them as she is. After her illness, she is reluctant to see Ada — “When she first saw me, might she not be a little shocked and disappointed?  Might it not prove a little worse than she expected?  Might she not look for her old Esther and not find her?  Might she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again?” (Ch. 36). It also causes her to mistake Mr. Woodcourt’s affection for her as only pity — though she had recognized it as love before her looks were altered. Her avoidance of self-knowledge leads to exaggerated claims of not being clever and thinking that it is only the generosity of those around her that allows her to be valued by them. A bit of honesty with herself and us, would be more becoming. Instead she comes across as obsessed with herself without even knowing it, and parading modesty. To those reading her story, however, it is apparent that she has earned the love and gratitude of those around her.

She is a good friend to Caddy Jellyby, Ada, and others — always ready with sensible advise and practical help. She does her best to keep Mr. Jarndyce’s friend and an object of his charity, Harold Skimpole, from taking advantage of Rick and Ada — even going to his house to remonstrate with him (not an easy task, as Mr. Skimpole boasts of his “childishness” and inability to comprehend business of any kind). She has a strong sense of duty, believing “it is right to begin with the obligations of home, … while those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them” (Ch. 6). She is very grateful to Mr. Jarndyce for his care of her. She is a cheerful, contented companion to him, and an excellent housekeeper. She is generous and compassionate, as shown by her conduct toward the mad Chancery suitor Miss Flite, the brickmaker’s wife Jenny (contrasted by the false charity given Jenny and her husband by Mrs. Pardiggle, another of Mr. Jarndyce’s mistaken charities), and the young crossing-sweeper Jo (from whom she and her maid Charley catch a serious illness).

Next to Esther, Mr. John Jarndyce is probably the most important and central character of the book. Unlike Esther, I did not find him a likable character. He is unfortunately obtuse and unperceptive. He is a generous old gentleman (he was “nearer sixty than fifty” when Esther was nineteen or twenty), but, despite the experience necessarily attaching to his age, he has not discernment enough to know an undeserving charity when he comes face to face with its unworthiness. This blindness to the true motivations of many around him becomes harmful when he supports such people as Harold Skimpole, who then continues on to leech off from others, such as Rick. Mr. Jarndyce also has an unfortunate liking for planning other people’s lives — though with the most benevolent intentions, of course. He amuses himself by anticipating a romance between his young cousins Rick and Ada — a romance he is obliged to frown upon later, as Rick proves himself too unsteady to support a wife. He plans to marry Esther (who is at least thirty-six years younger than he!), a plan which ultimately causes her some distress, as she falls in love with the physician Allan Woodcourt, who returns her affection. Mr. Jarndyce discovers this, and releases Esther from her engagement eventually, but cannot resist masterminding her engagement to Mr. Woodcourt, among other things.

Mr. Jarndyce should not have consented to an engagement between Rick and Ada until Rick was able to support a wife. Having done so, he was wise to break it off when Richard showed that he had no intention of settling down and earning a living, but it is obvious that he was not prepared for the responsibility of guiding young adults. This is hardly surprising considering his position as an old bachelor. It would have been better and wiser not to have taken the charge of three previously unacquainted young people (ages seventeen and nineteen) of both genders under one roof. Still, though flighty and eccentric, Mr. Jarndyce is a generous man who does his best to keep Esther from feeling at a disadvantage because of her birth, and does many other kind and generous actions.

Of all the characters in this book, Richard Carstone was the one I most disliked. He is selfish, unreasonable, irresponsible, and dishonorable. Too many excuses are made for him. Even though he is wrapped up in the Jarndyce case, he could still have been honorable enough to not allow it to affect others’ lives. He was flighty and irresponsible even before he became obsessed with the Jarndyce case — and it can’t just all be chalked up to his making Latin verses in school, as Esther tries to do, or to the draw of the Chancery case, as Mr. Jarndyce tries to do. He ungenerously suspects Mr. Jarndyce of wanting to cheat him out of his rights in the case. He refuses to analyze the likelihood of these suspicions, or to make amends for the pain they cause — declaring that if he has done wrong, he will make reparation only after the case is settled. He finds himself unable to settle to any occupation or profession — until the case is settled, he says. This would be bad enough if it only affected himself, but he wins the love of his cousin Ada, and marries her — marries her to trouble and poverty. Sad to say, the best thing he does for Ada is to die, which he promptly does when the court case ends due to the entire estate having been absorbed in costs.

Ada Clare is a sweet, beautiful, loving girl. She is wise in her knowledge of Richard and her behaviour as a wife and yet imprudent, for she marries him despite this knowledge. She makes an excellent wife to her husband (“I want him, when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face.  I want him, when he looks at me, to see what he loved in me.” — Ch. 60), but she ought never to have married him. She married him, despite being well aware that he was not reliable. She should have considered that he would be the father of her children, but instead she decided that the job of any children they might have would be to reclaim him (instead of him taking care of them). This was very wrong.

My favorite character of the book was the doctor, Allan Woodcourt. He is a strong, good man, consistently portraying humility, humanity, compassion, generosity, gentleness, sense, bravery, and uprightness. He is kind to the poor, never being patronizing or condescending. He is a good friend to Rick, always encouraging him to do right and taking care of him, and being a comfort to Ada. He doesn’t propose to Esther until he knows he will be able to support her — a process which takes some time as he begins very poor. Esther at first refuses him, as she is engaged to Mr. Jarndyce. In the end however, he deservedly gets the girl and lives happily ever after.

Two other characters I particularly liked were Caddy Jellyby and Charlotte (called Charley) Neckett. Caddy is the daughter of Mrs. Jellyby who is one of the unworthy philanthropists Mr. Jarndyce helps support. Caddy becomes Esther’s friend and looks up to her. Caddy’s mother completely ignores her family, and Caddy tries to compensate for her mother’s neglect (and her father’s —he is practically a nonentity in his family). She is not blind to her mother’s faults and determines not to repeat them. In an attempt to improve herself, she begins taking dancing lessons. She falls in love with the teacher, Prince Turveydrop (named by his father for the Prince Regent). She marries him, works hard, and is dedicated to her husband and children. One thing I didn’t like about her characterization was her blindness to the true character of her father-in-law. Her love for her husband should have enlightened her to the fact that old Mr. Turveydrop was taking advantage of him. It doesn’t make sense that she can see so clearly the harm that her mother does, but not the harm in old Mr. Turveydrop.

Charley Neckett is the daughter of “Coavinses” — a man who calls in debts, and is accordingly disliked. Charley is hard-working, uncomplaining, loving, and dedicated to her family. After her mother’s death, she does her best to mother her little brother and baby sister. After her father’s death, when she is thirteen years old, she goes out to work, supporting her siblings and herself. Mr. Jarndyce befriends them. He puts her brother to school, and gives her work as Esther’s maid. Charley works hard in gratitude for these kindnesses. When Esther becomes dangerously ill, Charley nurses her devotedly. And yet, despite these virtues, Charley is still an adorable child, with her dimples and her enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential! Esther says of her, “Charley verified the adage about little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more sayings and doings in a day than would have come to my ears in a month.” (Ch. 37).

I liked Dickens’s use of present-tense in the portions of Bleak House that were not narrated by Esther. He had a good idea in making Esther narrate, but was hindered by his preference for simple, saintly women, to which the flaws in the narrative can largely be attributed. Often during Esther’s account, the phrase “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” came to my mind. Take this example from chapter 3: “I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. … I had always rather a noticing way—not a quick way, oh, no!—a silent way of noticing what passed before me and thinking I should like to understand it better.  I have not by any means a quick understanding.  When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brighten.  But even that may be my vanity.” And then, “I have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed I don’t), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is.” And was Esther really so stupid as to not understand the difference between indifference and goodness? She says, “Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was not so good, and wept bitterly.” (Ch. 3) And then when Ada notices how thoughtful and cheerful Esther is, and how she so unpretendingly makes such a difference even in the Jellybys’ house, Esther remarks, “My simple darling!  She was quite unconscious that she only praised herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she made so much of me!” (Ch. 3). Whenever someone shows affection or appreciation for her, Esther chalks it up to only being their own goodness to her, calling it “[t]he old conspiracy to make me happy!” and declaring, “Everybody seemed to be in it!” (Ch. 35) .

Like Dickens’s other novels, Bleak House contains a large number of characters (many of them completely unnecessary to the story, such as Mr. Jobling, Mrs. Smallweed, Mr. Chadband, &c.). The lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn is a suppressed but cruel man, who plays a large part in the uncovering of Lady Dedlock’s guilt. When he is murdered, three people come under suspicion, allowing great scope for the talent of Inspector Bucket, a sociable, clever man — very amusing to read about, but with a respectful, serious side. The mad Chancery suitor Miss Flite is not a major character, but she foreshadows what Richard Carstone will become. The miserable crossing-sweeper Jo weaves his way in and out of the lives of all the major characters of the story, despite his not knowing “nothink about nothink at all.”

Bleak House is by no means my favorite of Dickens’s novels, but I can see why it is considered one of his greatest.

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Notes:

This post is part of the Dickens Project that “Sophie” of A Reasonable Quantity of Butter and I are doing. You can read Sophie’s post here: ‘Bleak House’.

I read Bleak House April 16 – May 3, 2013.

Screencaps from the 2005 mini-series ‘Bleak House’ with Anna Maxwell Martin (Esther Summerson), Denis Lawson (John Jarndyce), Carey Mulligan (Ada Clare), Gillian Anderson (Lady Dedlock), Patrick Kennedy (Richard Carstone), Katie Angelou (Charley Neckett), Richard Harrington (Allan Woodcourt), and Natalie Press (Caddy Turveydrop).

For some reason, It’s been a slow process making my list for this year, and there’s a giant hole at the end of it.

Since I’ll be working full time starting in June, this will be the first summer when I will not have enough time to read everything I want, so I’ve placed a bit of pressure on myself to make the time I do have worth it.

Here’s my list as it stands so far.

1. My first and most important goal was to reread The Great Gatsby before the movie came out. I finished with one day to spare and plan to see the movie next week with my best friend and fellow Gatsby lover. See Thursday’s post on my expectations for the film.
2. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow. One of my favorite genres is mid-life crisis novels, and though I’ve hardly cracked it open yet, this one certainly holds promise to become a new favorite. Based on the reviews I’ve read, Eugene Henderson seems to be just the type of eccentric wanderer I love to get to know, and his spontaneous travels through Africa sound like a hilarious disaster and learning experience waiting to happen.
   

   Détail d’une photo de Gemma Galgani (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

3. During my busier months I like to have a book that I can poke through slowly. I ordered The Life of St. Gemma Galgani  by Ven. Fr. Germanus to be my summer devotional reading, though it will probably take me a while to get through while working.
4. After my internship ends in August, I’m torn about what to read during my last two weeks before school starts. Their Eyes Were Watching God has been on my list for years, but I’m also considering picking up David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls because of the title alone.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Since I am still trying to catch up on my reviews and I’ve read Catcher in the Rye, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe I’ll be reviewing them in one piece.  I’ve read three more books since then and it’s easier to read on the train and harder to write. First, there’s not much original to say about these works, I can only add my own opinion.

Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger:

This has been considered a classic simply for the way Salinger addresses mental illness in the late ’40s, early 50′s.  It’s a different type of classic now because the story has been corrupted by our culture of violence.  A teenager reading this for the first time will be disappointed there is no bloodshed, no sex, no ‘excitement’.  The first person narrative seems destined to erupt into some horror of depravity and despair.  The cataclysm never arrives because it would be completely beyond the pale for the author.

Salinger’s daring lies in the internal conversation Holden carries on, gaining momentum as he emotionally staggers from pillar to pillar attempting to right himself internally.  His body, however, is at the mercy of his mind.  As he reaches out to friends and strangers alike, his paranoia builds in intensity, until he rejects even his own beloved younger sister. Salinger, masterfully employs a fugue state as Caulfield collapses, and then re-emerges in the present tense.

Mental illness is no longer a subject to be spurned.  Today, pretty much everyone believes they suffer from some form of mental illness, if for no other reason than to escape responsibility for their behavior.    It’s clear in the initial and final paragraphs, Holden doesn’t know what events are true and what is his attempt at reconstruction.  Salinger’s protagonist, doesn’t deny responsibility, he simply states matters as he knows them, leaving the rest for the reader and the novel’s internal audience.  Salinger sums this up in an intimate fashion. There isn’t the wholesale slaughter of innocents many have come to expect in fiction, and maybe that’s just the point.

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:

I’ve heard it doesn’t really count unless you read Chaucer in the original English.  To be quite honest, I didn’t read Don Quioxte in Spanish, Inferno in Italian, nor Crime and Punishment in Russian.  (Speaking of being in Hell, with a hopeless romantic as Punishment for your Crimes…Oy.)  But they’ve enriched me just the same.

I’m not sure Chaucer would enrich me in any language, but it’s an interesting concept for storytelling.   Figure this:  you have a collection of short stories with nothing in common.  Some aren’t even very good, but you want to get them out there.  Self-publishing is in its antiquity, (Anyone can publish anything with any amount of money.)  Chaucer thinks if he can just get this one work off the ground, his more ambitious efforts will follow.  I’m not sure what constitutes a bestseller in the days of yore, but none of his other efforts seem to have stood the test of time with the exception of Troilus and Cressida. I will probably not chase it down for the sheer pleasure of saying I’ve read more Chaucer than just Canterbury Tales.  Yes. Back to the Tales. We have bawdiness, gallantry, romance, and adventure. We have a narrator who spends more time blabbing about who these people are than the actual telling of the tales.  Ok, fine, it’s a classic. I was bored to tears.  Hoping the next story would be better is the only thing that got me through this.

Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 2:

Poe wrote more than just horror stories, and this collection samples that variety. There are some of his more famous works, the Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Cask of Amontillado. But there are lesser-known works, some of which are not horror at all.  A couple of them almost sound like travelogues for places that exist solely in his imagination. Some of this work is used for place-setting in other stories.

The editors of this collection showcase a couple of themes running through Poe’s work.  Not only do we see the intricate detail of place and time being developed, we see themes of mental illness, unrequited love (frequently of a close relative) and the destroying nature of guilt.  More than one of his stories is built on the premise that the remains of the victim prey so harshly on the mind of the murderer he gives up his guilt rather than live with the accusation. (The Tell-Tale Heart is one example; in another the narrator becomes so flustered he betrays himself to the police.)  These are stories we’ve read and heard about most of our educational lives.  Reading them again with a blind eye to previous experience, enables us to feel again the incipient loss of hope as the walls close around us in The Pit and the Pendulum, as well as the emerging terror of our actions in Berenice.

Reading Poe can be hard work. His prose is dense and filled with complex descriptions.  His narratives tend to exist in the mind of the speaker. Little external dialogue results in a sense of isolation, and nervous anxiety.  The underlying menace becomes singularly suffocating as you can no more escape his thoughts than he can.