Orhan Pamuk's novel, The White Castle, deals explicitly with the issue of identity, not surprisingly, as his autobiography Istanbul deals a great bit with that topic as well. Throughout The White Castle, the question of whether and individual can be replaced by another and whether anyone would really notice is proposed.
It is a bit twisted, of course, but a fascinating idea. Really, what does our identity mean and what does it lie in? What would it matter if we died today? It was odd because as I was reading The White Castle, I had already found myself pondering on a similar question on my own. I had remembered hearing about an almost tragedy that occurred to a boy I knew and thinking, momentarily, better him than me. I immediately felt ashamed for that thought and took it back, but it was too late. I had already released it fromt he vault. Now why better that boy than me? Why better one person than another? Is any one person's identity really worth that much more than any other person's, and if so, why?
The White Castle deals with this issue in exploring the life a man who becomes enslaved by a man whom is referred to as Hoja, meaning master, in Istanbul, a man whom he also happens to look strikingly similar to. The Hoja is obsessed with knowing every detail of the young man's life, as well as recording all of the details of his own. The entire novel focuses on a search for self-knowledge as the slave and the Hoja sit down and try to record and understand why they are what they are. They come to an ultimate conclusion about stories, that “the ideal story should begin innocently like a fairy-tale, be frightening like a nightmare in the middle, and conclude sadly like a love story ending in separation.”
One has to wonder after finishing the book, if there were even really two characters at all, or if it was only ever the slave, or only ever the Hoja talking to himself in the mirror. Probably not, but Pamuk makes this feel like a possibility, which is where the brilliance of his book lies. It also lies in that he was able to write a story that followed exactly the recipe that his characters decided upon within the novel. However, whether the characters were real, whether they were simply talking to themselves or writing down something fantastical, whether any of it was really true at all, it does what a good novel should do, in that it makes the reader question identity and grapple with the same questions the characters are grappling with. Why am I what I am, every reader must ask themselves, perhaps while staring into the mirror for so long that their face no longer seems to resemble a face anymore by the end of it. And hopefully, after all that staring and all that thinking, and with the help of Pamuk's characters' conclusions as well, one will come to some answer, some sense of self-discovery. In this way, Pamuk hit the nail on the head, because identity and self-discovery are truly the issues that the human race, from my perspective anyway, seems ultimately most concerned with.
Friday, December 21, 2012
A Tale of Love and Darkness: Reading Response
Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness talks about his own personal life. It is always interesting to read the autobiographies of author's whose other novels we have read in class, Oz's novel being one of my favorites, My Michael.
A Tale of Love and Darkness seems to show a lot of where Oz was coming from when he wrote My Michael. The issues prevalent to people living in Jerusalem in the mid 20th century are ones that I otherwise would never have picked up on, being an American born on the cusp of the 21st century in Massachusetts. I constantly have to remind myself that while autobiographies are an account of an individual's life, they are also a social commentary as much as anything else. Oz's book served to reiterate this to me once more.
The complexity of the relationships between the different members of Oz's family was one of the most striking things for me, especially the relationship between his grandmother and grandfather. He painted a picture of a man in his grandfather that I would have most liked to meet. Though he went to elope with Oz's grandmother as a young man, he allegedly fell in love with another girl along the way and was said to have been dragged to the altar by his ear, and dragged all the way to Jerusalem. Throughout the course of their marriage, the grandmother is fairly brutal with the grandfather, ordering him about to beat the carpets and clean things- cater to her germaphobia, and basically carry out a miserable existence. Still, he is described as a kind and intellectual man. My favorite part comes, however, when the grandmother dies and Oz describes the kind of sexual awakening he believes occurred for his grandfather. Now in his seventies, the man was suddenly freed from a life of deep enslavement and took advantage of it, by taking his sexual pleasure among as many lovers as he could find.
"When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf life in some corner of an out-of-the-way library somewhere, in Reykjavik, Valladolid, or Vancouver," [Oz 23.] On this same page where he writes such a brilliant and fascinating description of the way that books survive man, he also manages to sexualize books, and indeed, much of the novel is fascinated with sexual depictions of things. It seems odd that even as a small boy Oz would have picked up on the sexual undertones and aspects of things in so much of the world, but then again, one must remember this is Oz looking back at his youth through the lens of age.
Once again, the autobiography is very rightly titled. A Tale of Love and Darkness seems to correctly describe the way Oz feels about life, as also exampled in his novel My Michael: that love [and sex] are often, if not always, tied up with darkness and despair as well. In fact, it seems nearly impossible to have one without the other. They go together, just like life goes with death, and so goes the story of Oz's life as well.
A Tale of Love and Darkness seems to show a lot of where Oz was coming from when he wrote My Michael. The issues prevalent to people living in Jerusalem in the mid 20th century are ones that I otherwise would never have picked up on, being an American born on the cusp of the 21st century in Massachusetts. I constantly have to remind myself that while autobiographies are an account of an individual's life, they are also a social commentary as much as anything else. Oz's book served to reiterate this to me once more.
The complexity of the relationships between the different members of Oz's family was one of the most striking things for me, especially the relationship between his grandmother and grandfather. He painted a picture of a man in his grandfather that I would have most liked to meet. Though he went to elope with Oz's grandmother as a young man, he allegedly fell in love with another girl along the way and was said to have been dragged to the altar by his ear, and dragged all the way to Jerusalem. Throughout the course of their marriage, the grandmother is fairly brutal with the grandfather, ordering him about to beat the carpets and clean things- cater to her germaphobia, and basically carry out a miserable existence. Still, he is described as a kind and intellectual man. My favorite part comes, however, when the grandmother dies and Oz describes the kind of sexual awakening he believes occurred for his grandfather. Now in his seventies, the man was suddenly freed from a life of deep enslavement and took advantage of it, by taking his sexual pleasure among as many lovers as he could find.
"When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf life in some corner of an out-of-the-way library somewhere, in Reykjavik, Valladolid, or Vancouver," [Oz 23.] On this same page where he writes such a brilliant and fascinating description of the way that books survive man, he also manages to sexualize books, and indeed, much of the novel is fascinated with sexual depictions of things. It seems odd that even as a small boy Oz would have picked up on the sexual undertones and aspects of things in so much of the world, but then again, one must remember this is Oz looking back at his youth through the lens of age.
Once again, the autobiography is very rightly titled. A Tale of Love and Darkness seems to correctly describe the way Oz feels about life, as also exampled in his novel My Michael: that love [and sex] are often, if not always, tied up with darkness and despair as well. In fact, it seems nearly impossible to have one without the other. They go together, just like life goes with death, and so goes the story of Oz's life as well.
Echoes of an Autobiography: Reading Response
Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz entitles his memoir, Echoes of an Autobiography, and very aptly so, because his autobiography is certainly nothing like the typical autobiography that one might pull off the shelf. "Echoes" is very much the key word here. Just as his novel Arabian Nights and Days was riddled with metaphors and mysteries, riddles and all things mystical, so is his autobiography.
A strange technique to employ indeed, as most of us expect such works of non-fiction as strictly categorized as "non-fiction" to be explicitly truthful. But Mahfouz likes to toy with the idea of truth as well as with the norms and structures of writing. His autobiography is a short collection of even shorter snippets- tidbits of wisdom, small vignettes that are almost parables or, rather, proverbs. They are never clearly explained and are certainly not stories that we can assume actually happened to Mahfouz in exactly the manner he describes them: some are far too fantastical than that. But each little story gives some vague, riddle-type piece of wisdom. One is not sure exactly what to take from the proverbs that make up Mahfouz's autobiography, and that is where the brilliance of it lies.
Mahfouz does not dictate his life to you, cut and dry, bland and straightforward. He gives it to you in a series of snapshots and allows the art to speak for itself, forces the reader to interpret his meanings. Never before have I seen a writer do this with his autobiography, but when looking at Arabian Nights and Days, it only makes sense, as that book too was not a whole story that that flowed from beginning to end but rather a collection of different peoples' stories, somewhat disjointed at times, somewhat confusing, even involving reincarnation at points, encounters with genies and sultans, mystical journeys. Nothing is explicit or clearly defined. It becomes obvious to the reader when reading Echoes of an Autobiography that this is just not Mahfouz's way. He would rather let his words speak for him, he would rather let his reader do some of the work, or indeed, almost all of the work, of interpretation.
One thing that it does seem safe to say is that Mahfouz is somewhat fixated on the theme of death, as it reoccurs all throughout his autobiography. Well, and why not? He was an older man at the time of its writing and the certainty that life will end in death and how that affects the life one leads has been a motif in both of the books we have read by him. One of his best "proverbs" spoke of him finding a rose with a note tied to it that read "Come, I shall be as you would like to find me." This proverb spoke to me more than any of the others, because I interpreted it as life speaking to Mahfouz. The proverb went on to sort of give Mahfouz a piece of wisdom- that life awaited him, and was his for the taking, that his legacy was whatever he would make it. He could leave any mark he chose on the city, but he had better do it if he desired, because someday he would be gone, dust and ashes. While he was alive, life would be whatever he made of it.
Perhaps this was not Mahfouz's meaning when he wrote that part of Echoes, but that's the beauty of it. I get to decide for myself what I feel like Mahfouz was trying to say to me, and most of the time, it is something pretty worthwhile.
A strange technique to employ indeed, as most of us expect such works of non-fiction as strictly categorized as "non-fiction" to be explicitly truthful. But Mahfouz likes to toy with the idea of truth as well as with the norms and structures of writing. His autobiography is a short collection of even shorter snippets- tidbits of wisdom, small vignettes that are almost parables or, rather, proverbs. They are never clearly explained and are certainly not stories that we can assume actually happened to Mahfouz in exactly the manner he describes them: some are far too fantastical than that. But each little story gives some vague, riddle-type piece of wisdom. One is not sure exactly what to take from the proverbs that make up Mahfouz's autobiography, and that is where the brilliance of it lies.
Mahfouz does not dictate his life to you, cut and dry, bland and straightforward. He gives it to you in a series of snapshots and allows the art to speak for itself, forces the reader to interpret his meanings. Never before have I seen a writer do this with his autobiography, but when looking at Arabian Nights and Days, it only makes sense, as that book too was not a whole story that that flowed from beginning to end but rather a collection of different peoples' stories, somewhat disjointed at times, somewhat confusing, even involving reincarnation at points, encounters with genies and sultans, mystical journeys. Nothing is explicit or clearly defined. It becomes obvious to the reader when reading Echoes of an Autobiography that this is just not Mahfouz's way. He would rather let his words speak for him, he would rather let his reader do some of the work, or indeed, almost all of the work, of interpretation.
One thing that it does seem safe to say is that Mahfouz is somewhat fixated on the theme of death, as it reoccurs all throughout his autobiography. Well, and why not? He was an older man at the time of its writing and the certainty that life will end in death and how that affects the life one leads has been a motif in both of the books we have read by him. One of his best "proverbs" spoke of him finding a rose with a note tied to it that read "Come, I shall be as you would like to find me." This proverb spoke to me more than any of the others, because I interpreted it as life speaking to Mahfouz. The proverb went on to sort of give Mahfouz a piece of wisdom- that life awaited him, and was his for the taking, that his legacy was whatever he would make it. He could leave any mark he chose on the city, but he had better do it if he desired, because someday he would be gone, dust and ashes. While he was alive, life would be whatever he made of it.
Perhaps this was not Mahfouz's meaning when he wrote that part of Echoes, but that's the beauty of it. I get to decide for myself what I feel like Mahfouz was trying to say to me, and most of the time, it is something pretty worthwhile.
Istanbul: Reading Response
For me, the most fascinating thing about Orhan Pamuk's autobiography, Istanbul was his portrayal of himself as a small child. Perhaps it is the writer in him- for writers notoriously pick up on and record details about lives, not only the lives of others, but their own lives as well- the reason that he was able to write about his childhood in such depth and with such perception.
Admittedly upon my first reading, I found young Orhan to be fairly disturbed. He starts out the novel saying, "From a very young age, I suspected there was more to my world than I could see: Somewhere in the streets of Istanbul, in a house resembling ours, there lived another Orhan so much like me that he could pass for my twin, even my double," [Pamuk 3]. Later, he talks about thinking of himself not as himself, but almost in the third person and writes, "I'd have liked to write my entire story this way- as if my life were something that happened to someone else, as if it were a dream in which I felt my voice fading and my will succumbing to enchantment," [Pamuk 8]. And he talks constantly about games he would play with himself as a child, to escape his troubling reality: "Instead of learning to face my troubles squarely...I amused myself with mental games in which I changed the focus, deceived myself, forgot what had been troubling me altogether, wrapped myself in a mysterious haze," [Pamuk 89]. He later describes this feeling of a melancholic haze as something known in Istanbul as "huzun" and it becomes a central theme throughout the novel.
Another fascinating aspect to Pamuk's work was his obsession with viewing things in black and white, and how this in turn affected his world view. He spoke eloquently of the streets of Istanbul, but also in a very dark and tragic way, as someone who from a very young age, saw the city for what it truly was, not just the glittery or glamorous aspects, but the frightening parts: "I love the overwhelming melancholy when I look at the walls of old apartment buildings and the dark surfaces of neglected, unpainted, fallen-down wooden mansions; only in Istanbul have I seen this texture, this shading. When I watch the black-and-white crowds rushing through the darkening streets of a winter's evening, I feel a deep sense of fellowship, almost as if the night has cloaked our lives, our streets, our every belonging in a blanket of darkness, as if once we're safe in our houses, our bedrooms, our beds, we can return to dreams of our long-gone riches, our legendary past," [Pamuk 35].
I think the interesting thing about when Pamuk describes Istanbul is that his description, for him, is so very specific to that city, but for me, it seems it could be applied almost anywhere you live. Granted, the cities I am familiar with (Boston, New York City) are not mere shadows of their former grandiose selves, but there is still a certain sense of fellowship as you walk the streets of your city; there is a knowledge that everyone has a story, a past, a darkness within them, that everybody is just trying to get along. The people may be laughing, may be drinking and partying, may be celebrating the night, but there is a communal-ness about living in cities that I think must be universal, and Pamuk describes it incredibly within Istanbul.
Perhaps the way he describes the city can also be seen as a metaphor for the people. In fact, I am certain that is what his intention is. I think it is a most apt comparison. The way people are run-down and neglected, the way they look so forlorn and washed out, if taken at surface value. We forget to see people as they once were, as they might have been, had life treated them differently. We forget to remember the past. Pamuk illustrates this in his biography more beautifully than anything else.
Admittedly upon my first reading, I found young Orhan to be fairly disturbed. He starts out the novel saying, "From a very young age, I suspected there was more to my world than I could see: Somewhere in the streets of Istanbul, in a house resembling ours, there lived another Orhan so much like me that he could pass for my twin, even my double," [Pamuk 3]. Later, he talks about thinking of himself not as himself, but almost in the third person and writes, "I'd have liked to write my entire story this way- as if my life were something that happened to someone else, as if it were a dream in which I felt my voice fading and my will succumbing to enchantment," [Pamuk 8]. And he talks constantly about games he would play with himself as a child, to escape his troubling reality: "Instead of learning to face my troubles squarely...I amused myself with mental games in which I changed the focus, deceived myself, forgot what had been troubling me altogether, wrapped myself in a mysterious haze," [Pamuk 89]. He later describes this feeling of a melancholic haze as something known in Istanbul as "huzun" and it becomes a central theme throughout the novel.
Another fascinating aspect to Pamuk's work was his obsession with viewing things in black and white, and how this in turn affected his world view. He spoke eloquently of the streets of Istanbul, but also in a very dark and tragic way, as someone who from a very young age, saw the city for what it truly was, not just the glittery or glamorous aspects, but the frightening parts: "I love the overwhelming melancholy when I look at the walls of old apartment buildings and the dark surfaces of neglected, unpainted, fallen-down wooden mansions; only in Istanbul have I seen this texture, this shading. When I watch the black-and-white crowds rushing through the darkening streets of a winter's evening, I feel a deep sense of fellowship, almost as if the night has cloaked our lives, our streets, our every belonging in a blanket of darkness, as if once we're safe in our houses, our bedrooms, our beds, we can return to dreams of our long-gone riches, our legendary past," [Pamuk 35].
I think the interesting thing about when Pamuk describes Istanbul is that his description, for him, is so very specific to that city, but for me, it seems it could be applied almost anywhere you live. Granted, the cities I am familiar with (Boston, New York City) are not mere shadows of their former grandiose selves, but there is still a certain sense of fellowship as you walk the streets of your city; there is a knowledge that everyone has a story, a past, a darkness within them, that everybody is just trying to get along. The people may be laughing, may be drinking and partying, may be celebrating the night, but there is a communal-ness about living in cities that I think must be universal, and Pamuk describes it incredibly within Istanbul.
Perhaps the way he describes the city can also be seen as a metaphor for the people. In fact, I am certain that is what his intention is. I think it is a most apt comparison. The way people are run-down and neglected, the way they look so forlorn and washed out, if taken at surface value. We forget to see people as they once were, as they might have been, had life treated them differently. We forget to remember the past. Pamuk illustrates this in his biography more beautifully than anything else.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Classics Defined: An Essay Exploring Derek Walcott's Omeros and Evaluating Whether or Not it has Earned the Rank of "Classic"
When we look at the epic poems of old, such as Milton's Paradise Lost or Homer's The Odyssey, there are mixed feelings, to be sure, regarding the style, the form, the content, and the pieces of literature as a whole. Nevertheless, they are considered by the general literary world as classics, books to be stowed on the shelf with pride, and dusted off regularly for guests too ooh and ah at, even if never actually opened and read. The curious business of a piece of literature transitioning from an ordinary work into a classic is one I have long pondered and been fascinated by. What makes a book a classic? Who says that that particular novel or essay or collection of poems is worth my time. What makes a book renowned, timeless?
The question seems terribly relevant now, as I close the final pages of Derek Walcott's "masterpiece" Omeros. While I was certainly able to appreciate the beauty of the language used in the book, while the ebb and flow of the poetry was not lost on me; that's all that it seemed to be, at times. An ebb and flow. Pretty words, pouring from the mouth like tinkling notes to a jumbled incomplete symphony. Where was the meaning? Where the coherence? There was something wrong with Omeros and it certainly wasn't Walcott's inability to write. Perhaps, more aptly, the problem lay within his talent; Walcott attempted to do much in his book. He attempted to tell a story, a disjointed story, with many different characters, physical settings and times. The narrator was always ambiguous. He tried to pay tribute to the epic poems of Homer, with characters inserted such as Hector, Achille [losing the "s"] and Helen. Yet there is also an island called Helen. And we're actually back in the America, pre-revolution, circa the early 1600's. Oh wait we're on an island again. Hector is a taxi-driver who impregnates Helen and dies in a car crash. There's a medicine woman. There are mysterious wounds. The author inserts himself as a character. He often refers to his mother's death, comparing it to the death of characters in the book, working it out in the words of his "fictitious poem". All writers know that writing is the best form of therapy, but Walcott's issues over the loss of his mother weren't meant to be resolved in his epic poem/homage to Homer, Omeros. To say the least, the man is all over the place.
The question I originally posed to myself was, "what makes a book a classic," and furthermore, "what makes a book worth my time?" The answers to the first question are many and varied. Sometimes, books have become classics because of their relevance at the time, to the social, economic, and political situations that the world was in the throes of. Books such as anything written by Orwell, 1984, Uncle Tom's Cabin or Huckleberry Finn. Even the novels of Charles Dickens were something of a social commentary, more than necessarily just stories written with clever words to make us laugh and provide entertainment. They were incredibly revealing about many of the living conditions in America at the time, more specifically, the terrible living and working conditions of the poor. So that answers part of the question. Books that I personally hated, The Lord of the Flies, to name one, was another form of social commentary. This is human nature, this is male nature, this is the nature of youth; overall, this is how unbridled boys, sent to live together without rules, supervision or a sense of inner morality will act. The book was disgusting in many ways, but it was meant to say something about human nature and that is why it is still taught in schools today. It has a relevance.
Other classics aren't as easy to explain as that, but it is fairly safe to say that all books of great renown have served a greater purpose at one point or another, if they don't still. What makes a book a classic? Relevance, really. That's all that it takes. Or brilliant writing. And brilliant writing being such a subjective term, perhaps we must narrow that down. Writing that does something other writers haven't before. Writing that can be acknowledged by the greater population as genuinely good, meaningful and important. Indeed, not every reader will fall in love with every book that is considered to be a classic, but when we step back, we can at least hopefully see why they have earned a spot on that list, even if it isn't our particular cup of tea.
So now, back to the question of Omeros. It is truly something I have wrestled with and pondered on for some time now. Why has this book received the worldwide recognition it has, why Derek Walcott has actually won a Nobel Prize for his writing, is somewhat astounding to me. In fact, according to an article in The Guardian, "The girl who typed it [Omeros] was saying, 'This is going win the Nobel Prize,' Walcott was later to remark." So clearly, there is a population who think that Omeros is the stuff of pure brilliance. And I, a mere student of literature still in her teenage years- who am I to say otherwise?
But does Omeros meet the criterium of a classic that I have in this essay, I believe, duly established? It may be full of lovely metaphor, complex relationships, and a devotion to the epic poem format not seen since, well, since the originals. However, the question of whether the epic poem format was a wise choice for a work of this particular complexity aside, the book does very little, it seems, to earn itself a place on the list of world-wide classics, or even a place on the list of books that students, or literary connoisseurs ought to be reading. That is to say, it is not relevant. It does not give social commentary, nor is it crucial to the times. It does not do something that other works have not done before, save to chew off much more than one book can handle- and even that, in fact, is unfortunately, old hat.
Walcott's "masterpiece" as it has been referred to, might have been his epic work, the mecca of his writing pilgrimage, but for those of us reading it, it has little to offer in the way of meaning, goodness, or importance. It is simply not relevant to today's generation, nor do I think older generations will find much within it to relate to, to take to heart, to allow to change them, as truly good literature ought to. Instead, if I might be so bold, I would suggest Walcott's Omeros was more one man trying to get a lot of things off his chest and attempt to tackle complex forms of writing, such as parody/allusion/flashback/narrator and author immersion in a very show-offy way. In other words, Walcott crammed as much as he could into Omeros so that he could show off to the literary world, and for some reason, the literary world [or parts of it at least] bought it. And yet even so, this recognition does not a classic make.
The question seems terribly relevant now, as I close the final pages of Derek Walcott's "masterpiece" Omeros. While I was certainly able to appreciate the beauty of the language used in the book, while the ebb and flow of the poetry was not lost on me; that's all that it seemed to be, at times. An ebb and flow. Pretty words, pouring from the mouth like tinkling notes to a jumbled incomplete symphony. Where was the meaning? Where the coherence? There was something wrong with Omeros and it certainly wasn't Walcott's inability to write. Perhaps, more aptly, the problem lay within his talent; Walcott attempted to do much in his book. He attempted to tell a story, a disjointed story, with many different characters, physical settings and times. The narrator was always ambiguous. He tried to pay tribute to the epic poems of Homer, with characters inserted such as Hector, Achille [losing the "s"] and Helen. Yet there is also an island called Helen. And we're actually back in the America, pre-revolution, circa the early 1600's. Oh wait we're on an island again. Hector is a taxi-driver who impregnates Helen and dies in a car crash. There's a medicine woman. There are mysterious wounds. The author inserts himself as a character. He often refers to his mother's death, comparing it to the death of characters in the book, working it out in the words of his "fictitious poem". All writers know that writing is the best form of therapy, but Walcott's issues over the loss of his mother weren't meant to be resolved in his epic poem/homage to Homer, Omeros. To say the least, the man is all over the place.
The question I originally posed to myself was, "what makes a book a classic," and furthermore, "what makes a book worth my time?" The answers to the first question are many and varied. Sometimes, books have become classics because of their relevance at the time, to the social, economic, and political situations that the world was in the throes of. Books such as anything written by Orwell, 1984, Uncle Tom's Cabin or Huckleberry Finn. Even the novels of Charles Dickens were something of a social commentary, more than necessarily just stories written with clever words to make us laugh and provide entertainment. They were incredibly revealing about many of the living conditions in America at the time, more specifically, the terrible living and working conditions of the poor. So that answers part of the question. Books that I personally hated, The Lord of the Flies, to name one, was another form of social commentary. This is human nature, this is male nature, this is the nature of youth; overall, this is how unbridled boys, sent to live together without rules, supervision or a sense of inner morality will act. The book was disgusting in many ways, but it was meant to say something about human nature and that is why it is still taught in schools today. It has a relevance.
Other classics aren't as easy to explain as that, but it is fairly safe to say that all books of great renown have served a greater purpose at one point or another, if they don't still. What makes a book a classic? Relevance, really. That's all that it takes. Or brilliant writing. And brilliant writing being such a subjective term, perhaps we must narrow that down. Writing that does something other writers haven't before. Writing that can be acknowledged by the greater population as genuinely good, meaningful and important. Indeed, not every reader will fall in love with every book that is considered to be a classic, but when we step back, we can at least hopefully see why they have earned a spot on that list, even if it isn't our particular cup of tea.
So now, back to the question of Omeros. It is truly something I have wrestled with and pondered on for some time now. Why has this book received the worldwide recognition it has, why Derek Walcott has actually won a Nobel Prize for his writing, is somewhat astounding to me. In fact, according to an article in The Guardian, "The girl who typed it [Omeros] was saying, 'This is going win the Nobel Prize,' Walcott was later to remark." So clearly, there is a population who think that Omeros is the stuff of pure brilliance. And I, a mere student of literature still in her teenage years- who am I to say otherwise?
But does Omeros meet the criterium of a classic that I have in this essay, I believe, duly established? It may be full of lovely metaphor, complex relationships, and a devotion to the epic poem format not seen since, well, since the originals. However, the question of whether the epic poem format was a wise choice for a work of this particular complexity aside, the book does very little, it seems, to earn itself a place on the list of world-wide classics, or even a place on the list of books that students, or literary connoisseurs ought to be reading. That is to say, it is not relevant. It does not give social commentary, nor is it crucial to the times. It does not do something that other works have not done before, save to chew off much more than one book can handle- and even that, in fact, is unfortunately, old hat.
Walcott's "masterpiece" as it has been referred to, might have been his epic work, the mecca of his writing pilgrimage, but for those of us reading it, it has little to offer in the way of meaning, goodness, or importance. It is simply not relevant to today's generation, nor do I think older generations will find much within it to relate to, to take to heart, to allow to change them, as truly good literature ought to. Instead, if I might be so bold, I would suggest Walcott's Omeros was more one man trying to get a lot of things off his chest and attempt to tackle complex forms of writing, such as parody/allusion/flashback/narrator and author immersion in a very show-offy way. In other words, Walcott crammed as much as he could into Omeros so that he could show off to the literary world, and for some reason, the literary world [or parts of it at least] bought it. And yet even so, this recognition does not a classic make.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Omeros Reading Response
Derek Walcott's Omeros is certainly a difficult book to write a response to, and with that being the task that lies before me, I must admit to being overwhelmed.
Actually, through a conversation with a friend in class, I came to this conclusion. My friend said that she feels that because Derek Walcott is an acclaimed author who clearly has a wonderful grasp of language and words as well as talents that go beyond our ability of understanding [as students] he should be recognized for that, and she should consider him a good author. But at the same time, isn't the mark of a good author that his readers connect and understand and relate to him? How can he be a "good" author if we just don't get it? Or does the fault lie within us, within our lack of intelligence, not high enough to appreciate the great academic masterpiece that is Omeros.
I think that- and correct me if I'm wrong- it's okay, to decide that a book is bad, or even perhaps to go as far as to say an author is bad, based on my own personal perception of the novel. The epic poem Omeros was, while beautifully written, indescribably confusing. I didn't appreciate Walcott's style of weaving back and forth between reality and fictitious worlds, his style of recording the events of the story so ambiguously, his style of using too many complex characters and too many time zones and too many references and just too...many.
In other words, I think the man tried to pack too much into one book. I think he has the potential to be an author I could really revere and love, but he fails to make himself relatable to the common reader, or at least this reader. I think that is a shortcoming on his part, and I think his work would be much more appreciated and much more powerful if he had made it more accessible to other people, people who aren't inside his head and don't think quite as complexly as he does.
That being said, I didn't walk away from Omeros with nothing of worth at all. There were themes which I found beautiful, which I could recognize, and understand the importance. Themes of passion, and how passion can overtake us and kill us, literally or just emotionally. Themes of sin and redemption of course, made their way in. The themes of imperialism, of change, of the old combining with the new, of colonizing lands and taking from the natives who had resided there for years before. In this way, I found the book to be very poignant and at times I understood the characters; their own confusions, struggles, despairs, attempts to reconcile what they wanted with what they actually got. I found this all interesting and intriguing.
But Walcott's work was too peppered with superfluities, with question marks and pretty language to be an epic with real power. They say less is more and it is certainly the case here.
Actually, through a conversation with a friend in class, I came to this conclusion. My friend said that she feels that because Derek Walcott is an acclaimed author who clearly has a wonderful grasp of language and words as well as talents that go beyond our ability of understanding [as students] he should be recognized for that, and she should consider him a good author. But at the same time, isn't the mark of a good author that his readers connect and understand and relate to him? How can he be a "good" author if we just don't get it? Or does the fault lie within us, within our lack of intelligence, not high enough to appreciate the great academic masterpiece that is Omeros.
I think that- and correct me if I'm wrong- it's okay, to decide that a book is bad, or even perhaps to go as far as to say an author is bad, based on my own personal perception of the novel. The epic poem Omeros was, while beautifully written, indescribably confusing. I didn't appreciate Walcott's style of weaving back and forth between reality and fictitious worlds, his style of recording the events of the story so ambiguously, his style of using too many complex characters and too many time zones and too many references and just too...many.
In other words, I think the man tried to pack too much into one book. I think he has the potential to be an author I could really revere and love, but he fails to make himself relatable to the common reader, or at least this reader. I think that is a shortcoming on his part, and I think his work would be much more appreciated and much more powerful if he had made it more accessible to other people, people who aren't inside his head and don't think quite as complexly as he does.
That being said, I didn't walk away from Omeros with nothing of worth at all. There were themes which I found beautiful, which I could recognize, and understand the importance. Themes of passion, and how passion can overtake us and kill us, literally or just emotionally. Themes of sin and redemption of course, made their way in. The themes of imperialism, of change, of the old combining with the new, of colonizing lands and taking from the natives who had resided there for years before. In this way, I found the book to be very poignant and at times I understood the characters; their own confusions, struggles, despairs, attempts to reconcile what they wanted with what they actually got. I found this all interesting and intriguing.
But Walcott's work was too peppered with superfluities, with question marks and pretty language to be an epic with real power. They say less is more and it is certainly the case here.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Family Dynamics in Literature: The Love Versus Obligation Dilemma
The family dynamic is one that has been a great source of confusion over the centuries. The fascinating thing about families is that they are truly a universal unit, as well as a concept. The generally accepted concept of the family, at least that which exists in the United States, is a beautiful one. Families don't even necessarily have to be related by blood or law; it is simply a close-knit and deeply bonded community, welded together through love and a sense of unconditionality that is not otherwise present in most of our relationships. However, the family units that are portrayed in novels from different areas throughout the world are highly different in comparison to the often unconventional and certainly unique ones that are fondly regarded in Western society. No, the family dynamics that must be explored today are those that exist in novels ranging in place from Korea to Egypt to Israel. The novels in question are Kyung-Sook Shin's Please Look After Mom, Naguib Mahfouz's Arabian Nights and Days and Amos Oz's My Michael. It is interesting to note that with the exception of Mahfouz's novel, each book has a strong filial reference proclaimed quite obviously in the title. The novels are all complex in their own way, but their undeniable similarity lies in the family dynamics of each, more specifically in the struggle and the failure of those relationships.
In each novel, the primary relationships are based namely on a sense of obligation. In an idealized world, family relationships would be built off of intense feelings of love and devotion. Although loving one's family is a struggle at times for most people, it seems improbable that the family unit would still exist were family relationships truly always devoid of any true affection. The relationships portrayed in these novels, however, reflect something very- and tragically- different.
Notably, there is Please Look After Mom, a novel set in Korea and scrutinizing not only the marital relationship between a traditional Korean couple, but also the relationship between the mother and her adult children who are living in a vastly different world than the one their mother grew up in. There is a great deal of distance between the mother and the other members of her family, and not the literal distance which occurs when the elderly mother suddenly goes missing one day in a Seoul subway station. Ironically enough, it is the physical loss of the mother that brings the family to the realization that mentally and emotionally, they have lost touch with the mother as well. It is the disappearance of the mother that leads the children to discover that they never really knew their mother; that is to say, they knew "Mom" but they did not know the woman they called mom as a human being, as a person outside of the role of giver that she played to them. The youngest daughter, the one most distant from her mother, has a passage that explains the relationship it seems that all of the children had with their mother: "To you Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom...it hadn't dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for you own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood," [Shin 27].
Likewise, the relationship that exists between "Mom" and her husband, the children's father, is a stunted one. Instead of the love and devotion one would hope to find between a couple married so long, Shin has painted a vision of a restless husband, at times even an unloving husband, a cruel husband, feeling trapped in his home, taking his wife's care and tenderness for granted. With regards to the father, Shin writes, "Before she went missing, you spent your days without thinking about her. When you did think about her, it was to ask her to do something, or to blame her or ignore her," [Shin 129].
The central focus here is on Shin's novel, Please Look After Mom, and how it portrays the dysfunction of family relationships. Naguib's Arabian Nights and Days and Oz's My Michael serve as highlights of the issues have been and continue to be herein discussed.
Arabian Nights and Days does not give the reader such a close look into the inner workings of the family dynamic as does Shin's work. but the lens which it uses is an important one nonetheless. It seems a common theme throughout the book that husbands do not truly love or respect their wives. They certainly do not have devotion toward them; nare a chapter passes that the main character does not speak of his desire to take another woman as an additional wife, or of his lusts after women much younger than him, in one case even the daughter of a friend. Wives are not treated with a great deal of respect either; they are in life what their husbands make them and in turn they earn no right to respect or the privilege of honesty from the man they have married.
Women in Naguib's novel are of a lesser position in general, which is not entirely surprising, and notedly not the purpose of this essay. However, it does seem worth noting that the sultan of the story has an obsession with putting mass amounts of virgins to death until his beautiful young wife enchants him with stories, convincing him to give up the pastime permanently. But does his repentance stem from his love for Dunyazad? No, it would seem, he appreciates her for her obvious assets, such as her body, and also because, "Her stories are white magic...They open up worlds that invite reflection," [Naguib 2]. But most importantly at all, he cares for his wife because, "She bore me a son and my troubled spirits were put at peace," [Naguib 2]. It appears very explicitly that the sultan's interest in his wife lies in her ability to give to him. She gives him stories, a son, sex, an escape mechanism...all of these are things that enchant him, things he desires greatly. His love for her is not the pure or selfless love of a marriage, especially since when we examine Dunyazad's feelings for her husband, there is nothing but fear and repressed loathing there. The family unit, in this case, is a very twisted one, prompted more by unbalance, greed, and obligation than any other observed in these three novels.
The one family unit in Nights that might be deemed positive also has a major flaw that strips its possibility of being any real example of a loving, genuine family relationship. The character originally known as Gamasa al-Buti is executed for murder but reincarnated by a genie in the form of a lowly Ethiopian man with little prestige and no family. As such, all he can do is wander sadly around the displaced remnants of his family, who have been shamed and forced to move due to his actions. They do not know who he is and so he can only mope and look in on their lives, comforted by the fact that they are safe and tortured by the fact that he can never truly be with them again. Yet even after he pines over his old wife and wishes to be reunited with her and his daughter, he still lusts after the young daughter of his late friend and wishes to be bound to her as well. Something about that arrangement seems sick to this modern day westernized eye, and it certainly does not speak for the health of the family relationship.
Finally, we come to examine Amos Oz's My Michael. And in all honestly, a field day could be had with how Oz portrays the marital relationship in this book. Before the main characters, Hannah and Michael, are even married, she is constantly belittling him, calling his remarks "trite", making him feel ill at ease or embarrassed almost constantly [Oz 21]. At one point after sharing a fact he learned at school he admits shamefacedly, "I was afraid you'd make fun of me talking like this," [Oz 23]. Does that sound like the loving repartee of two lovers? Is not your wife or your husband the person you ought to be able to trust most in the world, to talk about anything to? Indeed, at one point after the birth of their son Yair, Hannah writes "You are a stranger Michael. You lie next to me at night, and you are a stranger," [Oz 66]. And so it begs the question, why did they marry in the first place. During their engagement Michael is filled with glee when Hannah laughs while imagining his head shaven, saying, "At last I've managed to make you laugh. Time and time again I've tried to make you laugh , and I've never seen you laughing. Now, without trying, I've succeeded. It makes me happy," [Oz 39]. One can't help but feel sorry for the pathetic fellow after that statement. It is also revealed that Hannah enjoys her husband's failures, that she "enjoy[s] his discomfiture" upon failing at a task, makes him "feel guilty" and acts "stiff and...hysterical" toward him at varying times, [Oz 48, 60].
Now we must examine why these family relationships all similarly fail in every novel. These people are certainly not inherently unloving or cruel. The daughter in Shin's novel has a boyfriend she remains devoted to, while her father has mistresses he maintains passionate affairs with, to the point of not even coming home at times. In Naguib's novel, the men feel strong affection and lust for women who are not their wives, and in My Michael, Hannah is shown most definitely capable of carrying on a relevant, passionate relationship with an individual- just for some reason, not the individual she married. Now why is it that as soon as love becomes unconditional, as soon as humans are locked in irrevocably and bound to each other, relationships take on an edge. A "for grantedness" seems to settle over the relationships and the treatment of family members worsens exponentially with time. We become used to people being in our lives, we no longer recognize their value, we even become annoyed with their constant presence and their habits. We fail to comprehend the state our lives would be in were that person no longer a part of them. That age old tidbit of wisdom quickly comes to mind, the one that explains how one never quite realizes the value of what one has until it's gone. This answer seems most precisely reflected in the reactions the members of Mom's family have in Shin's novel after she has been discovered missing.
"Why did it never occur to you that mom didn't knowhow to read or write, even when she relied on you as a child, even after you read her the letters and wrote replies for her?" [Shin 17.] The youngest daughter wonders forst the first time. She them comes to a revelatory conclusion: "'After Mom went missing, I realized there's an answer to everything. I could have done everything she wanted me to do. It wasn't important. I don't know why I got under her skin over things like that,'" [Shin 114]. The father, similarly, feels regret, and finally comes to understand truths about his wife that he never seen in the half-century they had been married to each other: "Only now do you realize, painfully, that you turned a blind eye to your wife's confusion," [Shin 132]. "Your wife, whom you'd forgotten about for fifty years, was preset in your heart. Only after she disappeared did she come to you tangibly, as if you could reach out and touch her." [Shin 131].
In each novel, the primary relationships are based namely on a sense of obligation. In an idealized world, family relationships would be built off of intense feelings of love and devotion. Although loving one's family is a struggle at times for most people, it seems improbable that the family unit would still exist were family relationships truly always devoid of any true affection. The relationships portrayed in these novels, however, reflect something very- and tragically- different.
Notably, there is Please Look After Mom, a novel set in Korea and scrutinizing not only the marital relationship between a traditional Korean couple, but also the relationship between the mother and her adult children who are living in a vastly different world than the one their mother grew up in. There is a great deal of distance between the mother and the other members of her family, and not the literal distance which occurs when the elderly mother suddenly goes missing one day in a Seoul subway station. Ironically enough, it is the physical loss of the mother that brings the family to the realization that mentally and emotionally, they have lost touch with the mother as well. It is the disappearance of the mother that leads the children to discover that they never really knew their mother; that is to say, they knew "Mom" but they did not know the woman they called mom as a human being, as a person outside of the role of giver that she played to them. The youngest daughter, the one most distant from her mother, has a passage that explains the relationship it seems that all of the children had with their mother: "To you Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom...it hadn't dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for you own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood," [Shin 27].
Likewise, the relationship that exists between "Mom" and her husband, the children's father, is a stunted one. Instead of the love and devotion one would hope to find between a couple married so long, Shin has painted a vision of a restless husband, at times even an unloving husband, a cruel husband, feeling trapped in his home, taking his wife's care and tenderness for granted. With regards to the father, Shin writes, "Before she went missing, you spent your days without thinking about her. When you did think about her, it was to ask her to do something, or to blame her or ignore her," [Shin 129].
The central focus here is on Shin's novel, Please Look After Mom, and how it portrays the dysfunction of family relationships. Naguib's Arabian Nights and Days and Oz's My Michael serve as highlights of the issues have been and continue to be herein discussed.
Arabian Nights and Days does not give the reader such a close look into the inner workings of the family dynamic as does Shin's work. but the lens which it uses is an important one nonetheless. It seems a common theme throughout the book that husbands do not truly love or respect their wives. They certainly do not have devotion toward them; nare a chapter passes that the main character does not speak of his desire to take another woman as an additional wife, or of his lusts after women much younger than him, in one case even the daughter of a friend. Wives are not treated with a great deal of respect either; they are in life what their husbands make them and in turn they earn no right to respect or the privilege of honesty from the man they have married.
Women in Naguib's novel are of a lesser position in general, which is not entirely surprising, and notedly not the purpose of this essay. However, it does seem worth noting that the sultan of the story has an obsession with putting mass amounts of virgins to death until his beautiful young wife enchants him with stories, convincing him to give up the pastime permanently. But does his repentance stem from his love for Dunyazad? No, it would seem, he appreciates her for her obvious assets, such as her body, and also because, "Her stories are white magic...They open up worlds that invite reflection," [Naguib 2]. But most importantly at all, he cares for his wife because, "She bore me a son and my troubled spirits were put at peace," [Naguib 2]. It appears very explicitly that the sultan's interest in his wife lies in her ability to give to him. She gives him stories, a son, sex, an escape mechanism...all of these are things that enchant him, things he desires greatly. His love for her is not the pure or selfless love of a marriage, especially since when we examine Dunyazad's feelings for her husband, there is nothing but fear and repressed loathing there. The family unit, in this case, is a very twisted one, prompted more by unbalance, greed, and obligation than any other observed in these three novels.
The one family unit in Nights that might be deemed positive also has a major flaw that strips its possibility of being any real example of a loving, genuine family relationship. The character originally known as Gamasa al-Buti is executed for murder but reincarnated by a genie in the form of a lowly Ethiopian man with little prestige and no family. As such, all he can do is wander sadly around the displaced remnants of his family, who have been shamed and forced to move due to his actions. They do not know who he is and so he can only mope and look in on their lives, comforted by the fact that they are safe and tortured by the fact that he can never truly be with them again. Yet even after he pines over his old wife and wishes to be reunited with her and his daughter, he still lusts after the young daughter of his late friend and wishes to be bound to her as well. Something about that arrangement seems sick to this modern day westernized eye, and it certainly does not speak for the health of the family relationship.
Finally, we come to examine Amos Oz's My Michael. And in all honestly, a field day could be had with how Oz portrays the marital relationship in this book. Before the main characters, Hannah and Michael, are even married, she is constantly belittling him, calling his remarks "trite", making him feel ill at ease or embarrassed almost constantly [Oz 21]. At one point after sharing a fact he learned at school he admits shamefacedly, "I was afraid you'd make fun of me talking like this," [Oz 23]. Does that sound like the loving repartee of two lovers? Is not your wife or your husband the person you ought to be able to trust most in the world, to talk about anything to? Indeed, at one point after the birth of their son Yair, Hannah writes "You are a stranger Michael. You lie next to me at night, and you are a stranger," [Oz 66]. And so it begs the question, why did they marry in the first place. During their engagement Michael is filled with glee when Hannah laughs while imagining his head shaven, saying, "At last I've managed to make you laugh. Time and time again I've tried to make you laugh , and I've never seen you laughing. Now, without trying, I've succeeded. It makes me happy," [Oz 39]. One can't help but feel sorry for the pathetic fellow after that statement. It is also revealed that Hannah enjoys her husband's failures, that she "enjoy[s] his discomfiture" upon failing at a task, makes him "feel guilty" and acts "stiff and...hysterical" toward him at varying times, [Oz 48, 60].
Now we must examine why these family relationships all similarly fail in every novel. These people are certainly not inherently unloving or cruel. The daughter in Shin's novel has a boyfriend she remains devoted to, while her father has mistresses he maintains passionate affairs with, to the point of not even coming home at times. In Naguib's novel, the men feel strong affection and lust for women who are not their wives, and in My Michael, Hannah is shown most definitely capable of carrying on a relevant, passionate relationship with an individual- just for some reason, not the individual she married. Now why is it that as soon as love becomes unconditional, as soon as humans are locked in irrevocably and bound to each other, relationships take on an edge. A "for grantedness" seems to settle over the relationships and the treatment of family members worsens exponentially with time. We become used to people being in our lives, we no longer recognize their value, we even become annoyed with their constant presence and their habits. We fail to comprehend the state our lives would be in were that person no longer a part of them. That age old tidbit of wisdom quickly comes to mind, the one that explains how one never quite realizes the value of what one has until it's gone. This answer seems most precisely reflected in the reactions the members of Mom's family have in Shin's novel after she has been discovered missing.
"Why did it never occur to you that mom didn't knowhow to read or write, even when she relied on you as a child, even after you read her the letters and wrote replies for her?" [Shin 17.] The youngest daughter wonders forst the first time. She them comes to a revelatory conclusion: "'After Mom went missing, I realized there's an answer to everything. I could have done everything she wanted me to do. It wasn't important. I don't know why I got under her skin over things like that,'" [Shin 114]. The father, similarly, feels regret, and finally comes to understand truths about his wife that he never seen in the half-century they had been married to each other: "Only now do you realize, painfully, that you turned a blind eye to your wife's confusion," [Shin 132]. "Your wife, whom you'd forgotten about for fifty years, was preset in your heart. Only after she disappeared did she come to you tangibly, as if you could reach out and touch her." [Shin 131].
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