A Few Mini Book Reviews
Hello again! So glad you could join me in my newsletter. Please, pull up a chair next to the fire. Yes, that's it. Would you like some hot chocolate? There, now you can get all warmed up––you're dripping wet! How's the work been going this week? I see, well that's certainly something. And the family? Mm-hm, just like them isn't it? Oh don't mind old Kipper there, he loves a good scratch behind the ears. How have I been, you ask? Well…
I Read A Few Books
It’s been a while since I’ve posted about any books I’ve read. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve been reading lately.
Introducing Kierkegaard by Dave Robinson and Oscar Zarate
Before this I don’t think I’d picked up an “Introducing…” book since my school days –– an oversight I’m glad I rectified. These little graphic novels serve as extended Wikipedia entries on a number of philosophical topics, from the problem of consciousness to the lives of individual philosophers. I’d vaguely heard of Kierkegaard before, but my only lasting impression was that he was irreparably dour and very, very religious. While those surmises weren’t exactly wrong, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is so much more to the “miserable Dane.” The fact that he was the founding father of existentialism, for instance, had completely passed me by. I also didn’t know that his writings were so varied, including some eminently readable philosophical fiction. His life was, in its own way, heart-wrenchingly romantic: he felt duty-bound to give up an engagement to one Regine Olson in his youth despite his great love for her, and remained tortured by the decision for decades despite their complete estrangement. Eventually he left his entire fortune to her in his will. I read this book straight through in two sittings and it’s inspired me to read Kierkegaard’s Either/Or next. 4/5
Troilus and Cressida by Shakespeare
It’s a little painful to say this about a Shakespeare play, but this one was a real clunker. It took me ages to get through it, and I may not have made it at all had it not been for the name on the cover. Troilus and Cressida are two young Trojans who fall in love in the midst of the Trojan war. They promise everlasting fidelity to one another just before Cressida, for political reasons, is forced to take up residence with the Greeks, where she immediately (as in, that same afternoon) is cajoled into giving nearly every single Greek hero a kiss. Later, Troilus’s worst fears are confirmed when he witnesses Cressida flirting with the Greek hero Diomedes and presenting to him the trinket which Troilus himself had given Cressida in remembrance of his love. Oh woe! Known as one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” this story could have been interesting if it could decide on its tone and, more importantly, what tale it wanted to tell. We spend ages with the Greek heroes, who have been almost universally re-cast as fools, but their story has little momentum. When it comes to Troilus and Cressida, the characterization is flat and Cressida especially is inconsistent without any real explanation or motivation, so much so that one of Troilus’s longest soliloquies is about how Cressida must be two people. Even from a completely self-interested point of view, her actions at times make very little sense, especially as she is depicted to be rather self-aware and intelligent. On top of all of this, the ending has little tension and no dramatic release. I suppose even the greats produce a dud every so often. 2/5
The Princess of Clèves by Madame de Lafayette
I inadvertently set up an exercise in contrasts when I picked up this book directly after Troilus and Cressida. The Princess of Clèves is an examination of virtue as embodied in the most virtuous of all women. In a thinly veiled recreation of the court of Louis XIV, which our author personally frequented, our heroine at sixteen is all good things: wealthy, intelligent, beautiful, and unusually virtuous. She arrives at court to locate a husband, which she quickly finds in the dependable, if not quite lovable, M. de Clèves. Her husband loves her “like a mistress” (the greatest of compliments in this milieu) and having no notion of any passion which might really inflame her, Madame de Clèves is happy enough despite not requiting his feelings. Happy until she is introduced to the Duc de Nemours, that is, who, in the expected way of such things, instantly stirs within her a torrent of love. Faced with nearly insurmountable temptation, and surrounded by a company that takes extamarital affairs almost as lightly as afternoon tea, Madame de Clèves takes the radical step of informing her already suspicious husband that, yes, there is someone she loves but that nevertheless she will always remain faithful to her husband. This is counted as an act of supreme virtue. A wife who loves another but remains faithful, and who is honest with her husband! Though her admission earns her the respect of her husband all the more, it also sets off paroxysms of jealousy so intense that they eventually kill him. On his deathbed, M. de Clèves accuses his wife of being happy to finally be free to marry the Duc de Nemours. But instead, once she is finally released from any social or moral obligation to stay away from her love, Madame de Clèves sets even greater demands upon herself. She is so wracked by guilt at the death of her husband and so haunted by the fear that de Nemours will eventually love another that she determines not only never to marry him, but never even to see him again. She shuts herself up in the country and never returns to the court for as long as she lives. With one man dead and two other lives ruined, the book ends by observing that her life was one of “inimitable goodness.”
Where Cressida was a cypher, The Princess of Clèves is often credited as being the first psychological novel, and most of its efforts are spent in analyzing the inward feelings of its characters. Its psychological portraits, especially that of Madame de Clèves, are surprisingly sophisticated for a book written in the 17th century. For such an old piece of literature, it is also notable that it was written by a woman, and one whom we know from records of the time worked to recreate the court as accurately as possible. Aside from the main cast, apparently most of the anecdotes contained within the book are in fact true, and it all amounts to an interesting glimpse at how the French court apparently really functioned.
I discovered this book in William Hazlitt’s amusingly titled “Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid,” where he gave the Duc de Nemours as an example of a hero who is not of the usual kind. 3.75/5
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
A historical murder mystery set amidst the workshop of the finest illuminators in the Ottoman Empire, what’s not to love? From the very first few pages I could tell that, even in translation, Pamuk is one of a truly rare breed of stylist. As I read through chapters which shift in perspective from that of a corpse, to each of the murder suspects in turn, to several hastily sketched illustrations come to life, I could tell that this was likely to become one of my favorite books.
But something happened as I kept reading. The beautiful writing couldn’t sustain me through a certain detachment — a kind of alienating coldness — that shot through the whole of the narrative. That’s a personal taste, but as I continued through I was more and more disappointed with the formal qualities too. The interesting structure became unbalanced by the end, overtaken by long, indulgent passages which didn’t necessarily need to be edited down, but which did represent a certain ugly unevenness in the book. All of that would have been tolerable, however, except for one specific effect which broke the book for me. As this novel is both a mystery and a story I’d really like others to read, I won’t be too specific, but in essence: one moment of shock and agony in the face of a particularly singular act of violence could have represented an extremely effective and memorable climax to the action. Pamuk, however, is so enamored of this brilliant idea that only a few short pages later he decides to portray this exact same violent act again, and this time with far less meaning and motivation behind it. This dilutes the impact of the first considerably, reducing it to more of a gimmick, and the denouement only spirals out from there. The final pages, too, were a disappointment for me. From the way the book was written, I knew the ending was likely going to bookend something which came before, and it does — but the earlier event Pamuk decides to reference is the last I would’ve ever chosen and in doing so he seems to be trying, among all of the artful recurring images he’d built up over the course of the book that he could have chosen, to find profundity in the most insubstantial and mundane aspect of the story he possibly could. For me, it just fails. I’m left trying to assess a book that was beautifully written but formally flawed, and which, while memorable, failed to evoke any real emotion in me. 3.5/5
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
I read this play because I loved Arcadia by the same author and I figured it was about time I touched Stoppard’s most famous work. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor characters from Hamlet who have very little to do in Shakespeare’s original. In this play we watch the other side of the action in Hamlet. Stoppard answers the question: What are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern up to when they’re not on stage, which, by the way, is most of the time? The answer is: very little. While Hamlet and company are living the drama of their lives, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are flipping coins, waiting to be given something to do. They have a vague awareness that they are not the main characters even of their own lives. And it becomes clear also that they are imprisoned somehow, doomed to enact the story of someone else’s imagining. When not a single coin flip turns up tails after hundreds of attempts, what hope for free will can there be? I’m a sucker for word play and lighthearted comedy, so I was bound to like this one. I particularly appreciated how it manages to dabble in the absurd without falling into total incomprehensibility. Still, I must admit I loved Arcadia more, even if it’s a mite less avant-garde than the play that made Stoppard famous. 3.5/5
And For Something Completely Different…
I can’t get over how pitch-perfect this Frasier/Columbo crossover comic over on Twitter is! I was hooked the moment I read the title, I Hear the Blues A-Killin’. Mercy.
That’s All for this Week
Thanks for asking! Same time next time? I’ll keep the kettle on.