READIN

Monday, December third, 2007

... I said to myself: the young traveler was so determined to find the unknown realm, he let himself be transported without respite on roads that would take him to the threshold.

With this line, at the end of the third chapter, I feel like I am starting to get a handle on The New Life -- that it is the narrative this character has conjured up for himself to distance himself from disappointment and lack of fulfilment in his own life.

This book seems to me like it would make a great movie -- there is a definite cinematic feeling to some of the descriptive passages.* But I guess in the adaptation, the book which leads the main character to intimations of a new reality would need to be changed to a movie on videocassette or some such.

*What I mean to say is, I think the narration fetishizes visual impressions -- like for instance, the narrator describes the experience of reading the book several times in terms of light pouring out of the book. (Another argument for using a videotape instead of a book?) I often get the impression that the only connection between the world in his head and the world outside his head, is the portal of his eyes.

posted evening of December third, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about The New Life

Saturday, December first, 2007

🦋 The Merchant of Venice, 4:1

OK, Portia has won my heart. This scene is marvelous -- I am finding it really consuming to read, it has a command over my attention that the first half of the play did not, really -- I am suspending disbelief in the strangeness of the events recounted, hanging on the edge of my chair thinking What has Portia got up her sleeve and Oh, so that's it! when she plays her card.

The trial scene up to Portia's entrance is just beautiful poetry. Check this out:

SHYLOCK

...
So I can give no reason, nor will I not,
More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing
That I bear Antonio, that I pursue
A losing suit against him. Are you answered?

BASSANIO

There is no answer, thou unfeeling man,
To excuse the current of thy cruelty.

SHYLOCK

I am not bound to please thee with my answers.

BASSANIO

Do all men kill the things they do not love?

SHYLOCK

Hates any man the thing he would not kill?

BASSANIO

Every offense is not a hate at first.

SHYLOCK

What, would thou have a serpent sting thee twice?

ANTONIO

I pray you, think you question with the Jew.
You may as well go stand upon the beach,
And bid the main flood bate his usual height;
You may as well use question with the wolf,
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;
You may as well forbid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops and to make no noise
When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven;
...

I'm seeing lots of possibly meaningless parallels to other works. Right now I'm thinking Wow, this is a great trial scene, I really liked the trial scene in Aguirre last night, I wonder if there's any connection... and Shylock begging the court to take his life with his property is reminding me of "Lady Waters and the Hooded One" -- but I don't think either of these has enough substance to make the basis for an actual thought...

posted afternoon of December first, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about The Merchant of Venice

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

🦋 Harriet and Janie are both rich

After I was finished reading to Sylvia the other night, I put down Harriet the Spy thinking, the class differences stuff that seemed so important early in the book has kind of faded. But I don't think it has for Sylvia as she is listening to the story, as witness tonight when Harriet went over to Janie's house and was let in by the maid, Sylvia asks, "So... Harriet and Janie are both rich, right?" And she was very interested in the subsequent scene, where Sport's father is excited about having sold his book.

posted evening of November 28th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 Gold, Silver, Lead

I can't get past thinking, every time I read about the contest which Portia's deceased father has designed to screen her suitors, that it is a lame contest. (Leaving aside the misogyny of it -- it should go without saying that the father dictating, from beyond the grave yet, who should marry his daughter is an atrocious idea.) 30% of petitioners for the fair Portia's hand will marry her without even a thought in their head -- and given that the contest seems designed to weed out the greedy and insufficiently thoughtful, that seems like a major bug. There seem to have been a goodly number of suitors around prior to the beginning of the play, so Shakespeare wants us to believe that everyone chose Gold or Silver, like Morocco and Aragon, and that only a "wise man" (if I'm understanding correctly that wisdom is the criterion) can possibly choose Lead. I'm not quite buying that.

Also -- I want to hear some reverse psychology from the guys as they make their deliberations. "Hm, in very sooth I bet her dad/ Would think that only dumbasses would choose/ The lead -- but hark! The silver's rilly cool/ I wonder what his thinking was in that/..." or something.

posted evening of November 28th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, November 26th, 2007

🦋 Random thoughts about The Merchant of Venice

• Jeez, that Portia sure is a piece of work huh. What does Bassanio see in her? (Duh, obviously that she is pretty and wealthy...) I don't have too good of a picture of Bassanio yet.
• Jessica and Lorenzo, I like them. I get the sense that that is how the author wants me to react, but ok. He is writing well then, to get me to have the reaction he's looking for. (Shades of Roger and Jessica.)
• Lots of bigotry, right? I always hear about this being the Anti-semitic Shakespeare play but there's plenty of Anti-african sentiment too ("racism" seems like the wrong word somehow?) and of course misogyny.
• I like the poetry. Something appealing in the movement back and forth between metered dialogue and prose dialogue.

posted evening of November 26th, 2007: Respond

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

🦋 Shakespeare

I was watching (the fantastically good) Bad Education the other night and saw a preview for the 2004 movie of The Merchant of Venice, and it looked pretty good. So I have added it to my Netflix queue, and today I bought the book to keep me company in the meantime, and this brought to mind my post a few days ago about embarrassment -- because Shakespeare is always a source of worry for me, that I will be found out as insufficiently literate, because I have not read or seen enough of his plays, or do not recognize quotations from them quickly enough. Silly (it goes without saying) but there it is.

Reading the play this afternoon, and getting into the rhythm of the meter more than I can remember having done in the past -- my memory is that when I was reading Shakespeare in high school and college, I was always trying to figure out what the meter should sound like, without much luck.

posted evening of November 25th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about The Movies

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

It has happened to all of us: one day, one ordinary day when we imagine we're making our routine rounds in the world with ticket stubs and tobacco shreds in our pockets, our heads full of news items, traffic noise, troublesome monologues, we suddenly realize we are already someplace else, that we are not actually where our feet have taken us.
        -- The New Life

My reaction to this line is sort of characteristic of how I've been reading The New Life -- I'm reading along sort of lacksadaisically, thinking about different things without focus,* and then I stumble on something like this that just blows me away.

What I take away from this reading may be a disjointed collection of beautiful quotes.

*I'm trying to reconcile this with my reaction to the opening passage and have not quite figured out how to yet... The whole opening couple of pages was a moment of genius but I haven't quite figured out how to read the book as a whole yet.

posted afternoon of November 18th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Orhan Pamuk

Saturday, November 17th, 2007

Tonight, Sylvia started to pick up on the class thing in Harriet the Spy -- first noticing that Ole Golly is not Harriet's parent, and asking me to explain about nannies; then when Harriet was talking to their cook Sylvia said "They're rich, right?" And that came up again when one of Harriet's classmates was dropped off by a limosine. -- It seems like it's a pretty obviously major feature of the book, and kudos to Sylvia for picking up on it, but I'm wondering a little why my memory of the book would include none of this -- it's all just a fun story of Harriet running around spying on people and then having some trouble when she gets discovered. Was I dense? Hmm...

posted evening of November 17th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Harriet the Spy

🦋 The opening passage of The New Life

Reading this book is a puzzle -- every time I set it down & then pick it back up I am having to start from the beginning, reciting the words like poetry trying to burn them into my consciousness, "trying to find my path" into the book. -- Because I am trying to understand the transition from narrator reading, p. 1-7, to narrator with his mother on p 8 and outside on p 9 ff.

posted evening of November 17th, 2007: Respond

Friday, November 16th, 2007

Tonight for bedtime stories, Sylvia and I started on Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. Looks interesting! -- I read this book, probably twice or three times, when I was 9 or 10 years old; I remember really liking it but not too much about it. For instance I had totally forgotten the class differentials in the book -- perhaps I just didn't understand them as a kid -- but already in the first few pages we are seeing what an important role class will play, as wealthy Harriet is brought out to Far Rockaway to meet her nanny's mother and she and Sport seem totally alien to the situation.

posted evening of November 16th, 2007: Respond

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