Struggle to Love Big Brother

1984
by George Orwell


This is another of the great novels that I first tasted as a teenager in high school. It was then, almost two decades before the title year of this novel, that I first realized part of what made it great -- the ability of Orwell to create a nightmarish world that literally brought the pages of the book to life was evident to me even in my first youthful read. The closest experience that I can recall from about the same time in my life was my first viewing of Orson Welles' film "Citizen Kane" which had the same effect on me, even though I saw it on television. This is the classic text for the will of the individual to maintain his privacy and free will, and how easy it is at the end of it all to just try to blend in and go with the flow to avoid making things even worse by speaking out.
“Thought police, Big Brother, Disinformation, Orwellian” are all words which have entered our vocabulary from the publication of 1984. One purpose of this novel was to warn against a future where the government spies on the people, where independent thought is forbidden and where people are forbidden to love. While Orwell initially was writing about the Communist and Socialist regimes that have since fallen, the novel’s issues and ideas are pertinent today throughout the world.
Orwell has a brilliant imaginative mind and the result is a book written in 1949 that maintains its ability to scare you with the terror of Big Brother. Winston is everyman and his fears mirror those of millions who have suffered under the tyranny of absolute despotism. But if that all there was it would be merely a good book. Only in later readings have I found this to be more of an allegory than a tale of the future, especially as I have now lived more than two decades past 1984. A novel for anyone concerned about his world today.
“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

View all my reviews

Temptation of a Young Girl

Sister Carrie 

by Theodore Dreiser

“People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.”   ― Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

This was my introduction to the world of Theodore Dreiser more than forty years ago when I was devouring American literature in high school. His journalistic prose style, while sometimes prolix, was just right for me and I read his novels about Frank Cowperwood and the massive An American Tragedy. But before Clyde Griffiths' downfall there was the story of Sister Carrie, published on November 8, 1900 to a prolonged uproar, that riveted me as she succumbed to the advances of vastly more experienced men. A Pamela some 150 years on, Carrie also confronts temptation, making the leap from her small town to Chicago and, feeling that she had few options, into the calculating arms of the travelling salesman, Drouet. After overcoming her doubts about sharing the salesman’s apartment, she stands before the window looking into her "never wholly convincing” conscience:
"It was only an average little conscience, a thing which represented the world, her past environment, habit, convention, in a confused way. With it, the voice of the people was only the voice of God.
“Oh, thou failure!” said the voice.
“Why?” she questioned.
“Look at those about,” came the whispered answer. “Look at those who are good. How would they scorn to do what you have done. Look at the good girls; how will they draw away from such as you when they know you have been weak. You had not tried before you failed.”
Carrie moves up the social ladder to the wealthy George Hurstwood. Fleeing an unhappy marriage he takes her to New York City. There things take a turn, for while the book is of course about Carrie herself as the story goes on, it becomes more of Hurstwood’s tale. Yes, Carrie is still the force driving it, but we are given two separate lives—as Carrie manages to thrive, Hurstwood becomes homeless, helpless. The handling of these characters and their tragic lives makes this a great book by one of America's best writers.




View all my reviews

Hemingway in Paris

A Moveable Feast 

by Ernest Hemingway

"All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the street and the closed doors of the small shops, the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the midwife - second class - and the hotel where Verlaine and died where I had a room on the top floor where I worked." - Ernest Hemingway, "A Good Cafe on the Place St.-Michel," A Moveable Feast



I read this when I was in high school and in my youthful naivete I had a high opinion of Hemingway. Since then his standing among authors has ebbed for me and, apart from The Sun Also Rises and some of his stories, I would not recommend reading Hemingway. A Moveable Feast is more a series of anecdotes than any attempt at a coherent narrative, as it moves from subject to subject, creating miniature portraits and taking in the atmosphere of Paris at the time. As such I would make it an exception, for it introduces so many characters from that era in Paris, including Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. Stein, in particular, looms large in the book, as a grand dame of letters--a great mentor to Hemingway, a distinguished innovator in literature, and just a little bit batty. She enjoys the power she projected over people. Hemingway sees her as a self-serving, self-satisfied crone, but he still makes her seem somehow likable.
Because of this content I believe this memoir may be worth reconsidering, if only to compare it to other works I subsequently have read about the same era.


A classic read

Same Name, Different Guys

Will Grayson, Will Grayson 

by John Green & David Levithan

“I think about how much depends upon a best friend. When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don’t scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there…"

This is a novel that makes me realize how times have changed. Years ago when homosexuality was not discussed in high school much less celebrated this novel would not have been possible. It still seems a bit of a fantasy if news items about bullying and worse are to be believed. But this is fiction and well-written fiction at that. It is also gay fiction with a gimmick: the protagonist is a duo, both named Will Grayson. And not surprisingly one of the Will's story is told primarily in the form of text messages. The novel effectively surrounds the two Wills with interesting friends. Most important both to the plot and both of the Graysons in the gay-friendly school and town and gay characters, is a very out-and-proud character nicknamed Tiny Cooper. Tiny breaks stereotypes by being both overweight and capable of having a love life. Another character, one of the Wills, is taking medication for his depression, a depiction that's handled compassionately. Parental relationships are idealized but heartwarming. And it has a plot with almost, but not quite, too many coincidences. As long as you are willing to suspend belief just a bit the story's roller-coaster ride is great fun and very entertaining, with some lessons learned along the way. It is a positive sign for our changing times that young people have stories about both gay and straight teens who live together and celebrate their differences.


"here’s the sick, twisted thing: part of me thinks i deserve this. that maybe if i wasn’t such an asshole, isaac would have been real. if i wasn’t such a lame excuse for a person, something right might happen to me. it’s not fair, because i didn’t ask for dad to leave, and i didn’t ask to be depressed, and i didn’t ask for us to have no money, and i didn’t ask to want to fuck boys, and i didn’t ask to be so stupid, and i didn’t ask to have no real friends, and i didn’t ask to have half the shit that comes out of my mouth come out of my mouth. all i wanted was one fucking break, one idiotic good thing, and that was clearly too much to ask for, too much to want."  -  John Green & David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson 


View all my reviews

The Iliad and Latin Class

Assiduus usus uni rei deditus et ingenium et artem saepe vincit

- Cicero

I am currently rereading the Iliad for discussion with our Lincoln Park Sunday morning discussion group. The reading has reminded me of the my first encounter with the Iliad when I was in high school studying Latin.
I had two years of Latin study which has served me well over the years as a foundation for my English skills, such as they are, but this Latin class was not just studying a dry dead language but rather it was discovering a living culture that extended from the early age of Mycenae to the fall of Rome. The source of this was our Latin teacher, Mrs. Helen Daggett, who was perpetually invigorating with regard to all things Latin and classical. The result was an exciting class that found that Rome and Greece were interesting and sometimes exciting places about which to learn. The Latin Club was one of the largest in the high school and the annual "slave" sale was one of the high points of the school year.
But, you may ask, what does this have to do with Homer's Iliad? After all, didn't Homer write in Greek, and ancient not classic Greek? Yes but this Latin class, as I mentioned, was about more than just Latin, but also the culture of Rome and Greece before it. So it was there that I encountered the Iliad, but not directly from Homer. I learned about Heinrich Schliemann from reading Robert Payne's The Gold of Troy. It was Schliemann's adventurous and romantic life (more recently chronicled in an excellent biography of him by David Traill, Schliemann of Troy) that first introduced me to Troy and Mycenae and the story behind the story of The Iliad. It was due to his persistent belief that the city of Troy in the Iliad really existed and that it could be found that led me to the story of The Iliad. I still remember admiring the mask of Agamemnon from my days in Latin class. However, in reading and rereading The Iliad that mask pales in comparison to the "Shield of Achilles" described in Book XVIII. I have read many of the classical Greek and Latin authors since those days I spent in Latin class discovering Latin and Greek culture. And my love for the classics I owe in no little part to that class.


The Gold of Troy by Robert Payne. Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York. 1959
Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit by David A. Traill. St. Martin's Press, New York. 1995