To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
This is another piece of quality literature; though I don't think it's as watertight as 1984, I do think that it flow better than Of Mice and Men; though I wasn't as enthralled with it as I was with Ishmael, of all the books I have thus far reviewed for you, this is the one I would most broadly recommend.
If you have not read To Kill a Mockingbird, I suggest that you not read this review until you've read the book because, whereas I was able to keep the secret of how 1984 and Of Mice and Men each end, I will have to spoil some surprises for you in this review.
I think the thing that impresses me most about To Kill a Mockingbird is the fact that Tom Robinson, though obviously innocent, was convicted; that, to me, is evidence of a gutsy author. So often I am disappointed by authors--especially those who write movies--who succumb to how happy-ending driven society and tack horribly contrived happily-ever-afters onto otherwise quality stories. To Kill a Mockingbird is not that sort of book.
I suppose, in a way, that 1984, Of Mice and Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird have themes that are, at least in a broad sense, related. Of the three, I think To Kill a Mockingbird is the sweetest--or bittersweetest, perhaps. On the other hand, it is also probably the slowest moving, and its focus is not as honed as the other two; it's a very multifaceted story and, though all the subplots come together in the end, I have to wonder whether Ms. Lee couldn't have streamlined the story a bit.
[It's almost immoral that I demand such efficiency in art!]
I do like this book, though; I think it is certainly deserving of its fame because of its message. If I'm ever the one dictating curriculum, To Kill a Mockingbird is most definitely a keeper.
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
Here's where I start to reveal just how fickle I am....
With all of my demands for fiction to be meaningful, I feel almost hypocritical admitting that I'm not much into symbolism; I just have such a hard time picking up on it. This short story being laden with symbols and foreshadowing, I didn't really enjoy it.
I'm not really sure, then, what defines to me "good literature" because I much prefer Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" to this one, but this one certainly has more of a message. I guess the fact of the matter is that I'm not looking for fiction to necessarily have any sort of moralistic undertone so much as I'm just looking for it to have an emotional impact.
Which, thinking about it, makes me, perhaps, a very shallow individual.... Sad day!
Anyway, this, too, is quality work that I have a hard time appreciating. Poe obviously kept his own advice in mind as he wrote this, but that doesn't mean its fun to read.
Going back to what I said at the beginning of the last set of book reviews: just as I was unoffended by Maurice Walsh's omniscient POV in "The Quiet Man," I was also accepting of Poe's disregard of the classic rule of "show don't tell" in this story.
Good ole show-don't-tell, man; I tell ya! If there is any semblance of a rule when it comes to writing fiction, SDT is it. I cannot tell you how frustrated I was when Oscar Wilde--another favorite of mine--broke this rule in The Picture of Dorian Gray. I mean, Lord Henry Wotton is the classic Wilde character, and we the reader are immediately amused by him, and then we get this at the dinner party scene in chapter 3:
*
A laugh ran round the table. He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox.
The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides.
It was an extraordinary improvisation.... He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible.
He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they followed his pipe, laughing.*
Okay, Oscar, that's--uh--that's--I don't know what the heck that is, but, poetic as you may have thought it was when you wrote it, I would much have preferred for you to actually give me the conversation.
I think this goes back to what I said in my review of Ishmael: when an author desires to give us something he himself has not, serious problems ensue.
But in "The Fall of the House of Usher," when Poe tells rather than shows us things, it is not because he lacks the knowledge of what his characters are actually doing, but rather because that's how he felt was the best way to tell the story.
For example:
*
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead -- for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
*
Now, I suppose Poe breaks the supposed "rule" of SDT in this paragraph by telling us what Usher said rather than showing us the conversation, but the fact of the matter is that Usher's words are not the main focus here, though they are important to the overall symbolism, I suppose, so I feel Poe is justified in glancing over them. Symbolism aside, "The Fall of the House of Usher" moves at a very deliberate pace, and I think that, had Poe inserted actual dialog here, he would have disturbed a very delicate rhythm.
Overall, a very high quality tale but not my favorite. Take it or leave it.
Now we enter the Hawthorne segment of these reviews. HUH-boy. I think I'll group them together because, if I don't, I'll just be jumping back and forth and end up confusing us all, so:
"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"&"The Birthmark"&"Young Goodman Brown"&"The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathanael Hawthorne
I recently acquired a collection of Hawthornian short stories that I'm chipping away at, though I'm thinking I'm going to have to take a break soon because--well--because he's Nathanael Hawthorne.
I remember reading The Scarlet Letter back in high school English. That is the only Hawthorne we ever read, I think. When our teacher told us about Nathanael Hawthorne, she mentioned that he had an obsession with guilt. The reason I remember that is that yesterday I was subbing and was supposed to assign the class "The Minister's Black Veil" as in-class reading, and the notes said something like, "Pay attention to Hawthorne's obsession with guilt," and I thought, "I think that's what my teacher said to me!"
Now I see it; the man definitely had a thing for guilt. In the above listed stories, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is the only one that doesn't have some semblance of guilt in it, but the four people that participated in the experiment should have at least felt ashamed for themselves, so perhaps a stark lack of guilt is the important part.
I think the biggest fault I can find in Mr. Hawthorne as an author (besides lack of diversity, which isn't too bad because everybody's got their groove, I suppose--either a grove or a rut, but that's mostly determined by audience opinion) is that he lived 200 years ago. That's really the only mark I have against him, and that's hardly his fault. It's just that literature as a whole--even great literature--does not age very well. True, some literature becomes timeless, but just because it's immortal doesn't mean it doesn't get old and rheumatic. Hawthorne is hard to read and--what with his obsession--hard to enjoy.
Though I read him with nary a happy thought, I do smile a bit when I think about how many different angles he found to approach negative emotion from: in "The Minister's Black Veil," an entire town becomes suspicious of their minister; in "Young Goodman Brown," a man becomes suspicious of his entire town; in "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," the result of the experiment was hoped to be permanent but turned out to be fleeting; in "The Birthmark," the side effect of an experiment was hoped to be fleeting but turned out to be permanent. Over and over, Mr. Hawthorne manages to pull pain of disappointment and guilt out the strangest places; if he pulls it out of his left pocket in one instance and causes us to believe that happiness is found in his right pocket, then, in the next story, he'll pull misery out of his right pocket and make us wonder if happiness is any where to be found--like in his back or breast pockets--or maybe the cuff of his pants--or somewhere in his hat....
Well that analogy just fell flat! My apologies; moving on.
Euthyphro by Plato
Did I say Hawthorne was hard reading? I recant: Plato is hard reading. Of course, so much depends on translation, and I don't think I have a very good one. Of course, "good translation" is hard to define; the fact that some of the original Greek is occasionally included parenthetically may indicate that my translation is great for those who have actually studied the language, but, as I have not, I would prefer more of a layman's version.
Nevertheless, "Euthyphro" is worth the intense effort of concentration required to stay focused, and I intend, therefore, to read the rest of Plato's Socrates dialogs (they're all four in one volume). Socrates was brilliant, and he puts on such an innocent facade as he runs Euthyphro around in circles and ultimately into the ground. I've heard a lot about Socrates's logic, but this is the first time I've actually been able to see it myself, and it makes me realize that the few "Socratic Discussions" I had in high school and what college I've had so far were really not very Socratic at all. In fact, I really had no idea what Socratic reasoning really was (though I thought I did) until I read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
Oh.
I forgot that I've read that since moving up here, too. Shoot. That isn't fiction, but perhaps it deserves a review.
Meh. Suffice it to say that it's a good book, one that will not be a waste of your time, should you ever decide to read it.
Good enough.
Anyway, what was I saying?
Oh! Plato. Yeah. Kay. Plato's good; had I a better attention span, I'd promise myself to read lots and lots of Plato (he is a pretty important figure, after all), but I'm pretty sure that I would never keep such a promise, so I'll satisfy myself by believing that I really will read the remaining three dialogs.
Well, that does it, I guess.
Oh, wait. That's right:
"The Quiet Man" by Maurice Walsh
This was a fun story. I recommend it mostly on the grounds of proving that omniscient POV can work. The story itself, though fun, certainly doesn't stir much emotion in this cold heart; it's one of those little-guy-teaches-big-guy-a-lesson kind of stories, which I know is a beloved premise in many circles, but I've pretty much grown out of that phase into a more morbid phase wherein I sometimes enjoy the big guy winning even when the little guy deserves to win because then we don't get false expectations of reality (of course, in reality the Good Guy always wins; see Post 9).
So. NOW we're done.
Whew.
Though I still have a long list of Fictitious Works I Intend to Read, it may be a while before I get around to them because I also have a long list of Nonfiction Books I Own but Have Not Read, and that may well take higher priority.
We shall see; I have a four-day weekend coming up in a couple days (my school district has a "Fall Beak"), so I may make a run on the library and have all kinds of reviews for you.
Till then--or when next I post--adieu.
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