Sigils

I just read this line in Book Four: Lord Tyrell the warrior, the queen mused. His sigil ought to be a fat man sitting on his arse.

Hehe

What would your sigil be? (seriously)

Big and little

This just occurred to me. Do'h! The juxtaposition of Brienne and Tyrion. She's a giant, ungainly woman who's repeatedly described not just by the other characters but also by the narrator as "ugly." But we like her. She's brave and good and resourceful and suffers for love. And Tyrion is also described as horribly unattractive, and his size also is all wrong, only the opposite of Brienne's size. But we like him. He's smart and honorable and resourceful and suffers for love. Each of them is falsely accused of killing a king. Each of them is also a kind of bridge or liaison. Brienne is loyal to Catelyn but ends up being "close" to Catelyn's nemesis Jaime. And Tyrion is loyal to the Lannister clan but also can appreciate the value of other families. Do you think they'll meet?

Ladies

Do you have a favorite female character? Do some seem more plausible in their roles than others?

I am rather partial to Arya, just because she seems to combine common sense/integrity/moxie to a degree beyond all the others.

Betrayal

Like the deaths, the betrayals keep coming. Which one did you find most upsetting? or surprising?

I'm still stewing about the Red Wedding. I knew something was going to happen, but I didn't expect wholesale slaughter, and the violation of the guest rule/peace banner was utterly shocking.

I also was pretty outraged at Catelyn for betraying her king (Robb) and freeing Jaime. That just seemed stupid and ill-fated and not entirely explicable as an act of mother love.

I sensed that Theon wasn't altogether upstanding, but I was also surprised by his heartless and cruel betrayal of the Starks.

Central hero

Ned seems like the moral thread that was holding everything together. As long as he had some power, the center seemed to hold, more or less, but when he is killed it all falls apart. The "game of thrones" begins in earnest with his demise. Is there someone who takes his place, someone who becomes the hero? Tyrion? Or is he too pragmatic vs. principled? Jon Snow?

A shocking demise

These books are full of surprising deaths. Whose untimely end has shocked you the most thus far?

Song of Ice and Fire: Likable villains

As we dive into Book Four, we've gotten a thorough look at the story's villains. I find the characters interesting because there's a simplicity to them; pretty much for any character, if you were doing casting, you could easily define who gets a black hat and who gets a white one. The distinction between good and evil seems so clear cut. So you have that moral satisfaction. But there's also the satisfaction of several likable villains, like Petyr Baelish and Varys the Eunuch. I was trying to figure out what's so intriguing about these obviously rotten eggs, and maybe it's the fact that they understand their world so well? Their vile manipulations are so doable only because they are so knowledgeable about their surroundings and put so much effort into being on top of things. Their very horridness arises from their skill at their jobs, which makes them admirable in a way and fascinating to watch, even while you eagerly await their comeuppance.

Do you see any sort of distinction among the villains in the book? Why are some more interesting than others?

Beli

In many ways, Beli seems like as much a main character as Oscar does. Her story takes up about half the book, and is pretty compelling and overwhelming.

What did you think of her character development? Did her actions make sense to you? How much are we supposed to sympathize with her?

Dominican Republic

What did you think of the way Diaz described the Dominican Republic? Did anything surprise you?

Hocus pocus

What are we supposed to think about all the fuku business? The golden mongoose and faceless man and the other magical realism elements?

Writing style

What did you think of the very conversational, slangy writing style? Did you like all the Spanglish and references to geek culture, or did it distract from the story?

Oscar Wao

What did you think of Oscar's brief, wondrous life? What did you think of the book as a coming-of-age story?

Any other general thoughts about the story?

Next pick: A Song of Ice and Fire

This may not take a full month. (hehe)

Next pick

"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz

Martha

What did you think of her?

It's so interesting to me how her dad's job took her overseas briefly but that the experience completely determined the course of her life. I guess it's silly to think about how someone's life could have been different but for this event or that event, but it's so tempting with her. Her being in Berlin at that particular point in time was so decisive in her life, when she might easily have decided (as a grown woman) to not accompany her parents ...

Nazi goofs

I admittedly haven't read a lot about the Nazis, but this is the first thing I've read that has shown just how bumbling and juvenile and egotistical they were. I mean, you see Hitler in film footage carrying on like a buffoon, but everyone around him seems so smitten and serious (when in fact he is so laughable ... his contemporaries could have laughed him off the stage, but we can't laugh at his laughability because we know how the story ends). The focus always seems to be on the sinister, on this united wall of Aryan determination. In Larson's book, you see the Nazis as petty, in-fighting, not terribly bright individuals plagued with paranoia and various delusions of personal grandeur. That was very interesting to me, in light of so many depictions of them as simply cold, calculating "evil geniuses."

And it's interesting to think about how, if you were thrown into that society in the capacity of a diplomat, you would interact with these people as individuals.

Ambassador Dodd

One of the things I really liked about this book is how Larson portrayed his subjects, the Dodds, as human beings with flaws and weaknesses — individuals who were caught up in an historic moment and reacted to it like human beings, frequently with self-interest and denial, sometimes with courage and honor. It was interesting to see how they navigated that world that they so strangely found themselves enmeshed in. Dodd's progression from naive and aloof and doubting to outspoken and belatedly involved was particularly compelling to me. Do you think he was a good ambassador in the scheme of things?

Staying out of it

A question I always had regarding Hitler was how did the United States let this happen. It's not like he suddenly came to power and wreaked unsuspected havoc in Europe. His ascension was years in the making and his goals of conquest and genocide were fairly transparent. I had always heard the stuff about the U.S. being war-shy after WWI and the whole isolationist vs. interventionist argument, but Larson's account of our diplomatic relations with Germany is the first time I really had a firm grasp of precisely how the U.S. let this happen, including a horrifying and cowardly indifference to the fate of Europe's Jews. Not really a question. Just an observation, if you have thoughts.

Next pick

Some nonfiction for June 25. (I noticed Christy used a story about this on last Sunday's book page!)

Aftermath

Did it surprise you how Bob Ford's life turned out after he killed Jesse? I suppose the stage re-enactments and dime store photos were that era's version of talk shows and TV movies.

It struck me that the descriptions of Bob after he went to Creede and opened his saloon sounded a little like Jesse. He was hot-headed and jumpy and good with a gun, a local leader and good businessman. But his arrogance and swagger was unpleasant, not charming. People loved Jesse; they hated Bob. It seemed like Bob's dream was always to be Jesse, and he could never quite get there.

Mrs. James

I found Zee's story pretty interesting, especially the way she turned a blind eye to Jesse's criminal activities. What kind of life must that have been for her? It was really sad to me how her life seemed to fizzle out after Jesse's death.

Dirty little coward

What did you think of Robert Ford? Did you sympathize with him? Do you think he deserved to be labeled a coward? Did it surprise you that he went through with Jesse's murder?

Jesse James

What did you think of Jesse, as presented in the novel? He's clearly one of those larger-than-life people who are so charismatic that people are drawn to them no matter what dreadful crimes they commit. I found myself rooting for him in the story, even though obviously I knew he would be killed. I felt let down a bit when he was no longer around. I feel like a dumb American "taking heroes from the criminal classes," as Oscar Wilde said, but I like the guy. I'm guessing the Brad Pitt movie doesn't do much to counter that.

So what did you think? Was Jesse the hero of the novel?

New pick

"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" by Ron Hansen
(Now a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt!)

Pick for March

Gloria Naylor wrote "Women of Brewster Place," which I read back in college. This might be a treat for spring.

"Blast Kills People Again"

Vote for your favorite Ruby Zaga headline! (or any other)

The name

And now for the de rigueur title question. Why "The Imperfectionists"? Any thoughts? Is it a comment on the profession of journalism? On this particular group? On people in general?

Deep background

What did you think of the italicized story that made up the end of each chapter? Did knowing how the paper was founded and its decades of history add something to the story?

Rome

Why do you think Rachman set the story in Rome when it's so easy to imagine this basic story unfolding in any number of locales across America? Do you think it's simply because the author himself was a foreign correspondent, or did you perceive an additional reason for the international setting?

Favorite story

Whose story was your favorite? And, as a journalist, whose story resonated most with you?

Characters

All of the stories seemed to have a deeply sad twist, which, even though I loved the book, left me with a faintly bitter aftertaste. I mean, it just felt like every single person connected with this dying newspaper had some kind of deep flaw, weakness, unhappiness, etc. Did that seem realistic to you? Am I missing something?

"The Imperfectionists"

Did you like the book overall? How about the way it was written, with each chapter focusing on a different character (and a different bit of the newspaper's history)? Do you think that was a strong way to tell the story or mainly just a convenient way to manage/organize a kind of sprawling narrative?

Obscurity

Although "The Eighth Day" was a bestseller and won the National Book Award in 1968, it wasn't universally loved. The New Republic called it “a book that means nothing.” Newsweek called it “a worthless bauble.” The New Yorker said that “none of the characters, major or minor, rings credible to the reader."

And it has fallen out of favor in the years since. A new edition was published in 2007, but for most of the past 40 years it's been out of print. I had never heard of it until I saw it on a list of National Book Award winners. When I went to get it from the Wichita Public Library, they had to dig it out of storage.

Do you think the book deserves its fall into obscurity? Why do you think it's not more popular?

The tapestry

The Deacon of the Covenant Church shows Roger a carpet with a woven pattern and points out that from the back, the design can't be seen; it's a jumble of yarn and knots. He implies that there is a hidden pattern to life and that there may be some special role for the Ashley family in the design of the world.

Then the book ends like this:

There is much talk of a design in the arras. Some are certain they see it. Some see what they have been told to see. Some remember that they saw it once but have lost it. Some are strengthened by seeing a pattern wherein the oppressed and exploited of the earth are gradually emerging from their bondage. Some find strength in the conviction that there is nothing to see. Some

What do you think is the message? Why the dangling "some"?

Covenant Church

What did you think about the inclusion of the Covenant Church at the end of the story? Were you surprised to learn they were Ashley's rescuers?

Miss Doubkov

Miss Doubkov may be the most remarkable resident of Coaltown. She's certainly the most perceptive. Early on we learn that she figured out long ago who killed Lansing and who rescued Ashley. She seems to understand everyone's situation, everyone's motives. She's the one who helps Lily run off to be a singer. She's the one who instructs George on how to make his confession and escape to Canada. In fact, she was the inspiration for George's dream of Russia.

I don't have a question, here, and I don't have my book to reference all Miss Doubkov's important scenes, but her character seemed to play a significant role in the story of the two families. Thoughts?

Breckenridge Lansing

The guy was awful, clearly, and there's no excuse for his behavior. But Wilder says he was just reflecting his own father's behavior toward his wife and son. And he knew at some level that he was incompetent and unloved, so he protected himself by using cruelty. And at the end, after his illness, he seemed poised for some kind of redemption. Did you feel any sympathy toward him at all?

John Ashley

My favorite John Ashley moment was when George was having nightmares before his tonsil surgery and John came in to calm him.

"Does the sun go round the earth, George, or does the earth go round the sun?"
"The earth goes round the sun, Mr. Ashley."
"And anything else?"
"The moon, and ... the planets, I think."
"And what's the sun doing all that time?"
"It's going very fast."
"And carrying us with it?"
"Yes."
"It's as though we were on a great ship moving through the skies." Pause. "I often have that feeling just before I fall off to sleep. We're going at that great speed and yet you saw how quiet it is down there in the square. It's a wonderful fact, isn't it?"

I love the gentleness with which he approaches George and the way he talks about life. It was especially touching to me after seeing the cruelty of George's own father.

What did you think of our generous workaholic, simple family man, genius inventor, fugitive murder suspect John Ashley?

Beata Ashley

"The Elms" may have been my favorite chapter of the book, with the delightful boardinghouse section. It made me wonder, though, about Beata Ashley. We never really got inside her head. Why do you think she refused to leave the house? She didn't strike me as the type to be ashamed.

There were a couple of sections that shed some light on her character. The first was Lily's insights to Roger in Chicago: Their mother adored their father, a self-centered, possessive love. An all-consuming love that kept her from having any friends or even paying her own children enough attention. Their father had a lot of friends, but he didn't tell their mother about them. "He simply didn't tell her because she wouldn't be interested. She was not a noticing woman and she was not a ... a sympathetic woman."

But Roger offered another picture: Beata worked hard every day, never let the children know they were poor, read them the best books and played the best music, was never short-tempered. And "there was nothing small about Mama." She held her head up and walked every day to their father's trial.

In the Hoboken chapter we see Beata's resemblance to her mother: "If her husband had entered the house one day and told her that he was bankrupt, she would have uttered no word of complaint. She would have moved to a slum and improved the tone of the neighborhood." She was taught never to demonstrate affection or tenderness and to develop "a spine of steel" and a "royal carriage."

Did you wish to know more about who Beata was and what she was thinking? Or was it not as important as her famous husband and children?

The Eighth Day

What did you think of the title, "The Eighth Day"? It comes from Dr. Gillies' speech at the tavern on New Year's Eve 1899.

"Nature never sleeps. The process of life never stands still. The creation has not come to an end. The Bible says that God created man on the sixth day and rested, but each of those days was many millions of years long. That day of rest must have been a short one. Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day."

Man is still evolving, he says, and in the new century (the 20th) mankind will enter an enlightened stage of development focused on Mind and Spirit, moving from the "self-favoring life into a consciousness of the entire community of mankind."

But Dr. Gillies didn't believe any of that. He thought the 20th century would be as miserable and dark as all the previous ones. He lied because he saw Roger Ashley and George Lansing there and believed "it is the duty of old men to lie to the young."

Let these encounter their own disillusions. We strengthen our souls, when young, on hope; the strength we acquire enables us later to endure despair as a Roman should.

What do you think the story has to do with this concept of evolving humanity, or of strengthening yourself on youthful hope?

Next pick

I'm very excited about this. It's about journalists! Feb. 10?

More by Brookner

I enjoyed "Hotel" so much that I looked into what else Brookner has written and found a lot of intriguing titles. I just finished "Fraud," which is about a woman having a genteel midlife crisis when the mother she cared for all her life dies. She disappears, and the novel is mostly from her acquaintances' perspectives on what she was like and where she might have gone. It was pretty good, slower-paced than "Hotel," and all of the characters had what I guess I'd call "mother issues" (like the Puseys), with the exception of one truly loathsome daddy's girl. (At one point I confess I thought each of these characters might just benefit from adopting a dog.)

Anyway, after I sit down with "Postman," this weekend, I think I'll pick up "The Debut" by Brookner. Here's the premise:

"Since childhood Ruth Weiss has been escaping from life into books, and from the hothouse attentions of her tyrannical and eccentric parents into the gentler warmth of lovers and friends. Now Dr. Weiss, at forty, a quiet scholar devoted to the study of Balzac, is convinced that her life has been ruined by literature, and that once again she must make a new start in life."

Ruined by literature! Hehe!

Another favorite moment

I really liked this exchange between Edith and Monica. I also think it's kind of telling about Edith.

Edith spots Monica in a shop "wolfing down a large slice of chocolate cake." She goes in.

"Well," said Edith, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "Any plans for the day?"

"Do me a favour, Edith," replied the other. "I am not feeling particularly bright this morning and I do not have any plans. I never have any plans. I should have thought that was fairly obvious by now. I thought you were supposed to be a writer. Aren't you supposed to be good at observing human nature, or something? I only ask because you sometimes strike me as being a bit thick."

Then Monica stabs her cigarette into an ashtray "and left it there to smoulder."

Isn't that bodaciously sassy?

Next pick

It's kind of long, and we have some holidays coming up, so we'll shoot for Jan. 3, but just let me know if we need a little extra time.

Mother and men

Edith says that she is like her mother "in the only way she valued: we both preferred men to women." Why do you think she included all that background about her sad childhood and her strange, distant mother? And why did she make distinctions between men and women like that?

True romance

How, or did, Edith's fiction parallel her reality? Did you get the feeling one influenced the other or would do so in the future? Could she go back to writing happy endings after her stay at Hotel du Lac?

Jennifer Pusey

Who WAS this chick? What was she supposed to be about? Oh — and what happened with that incident with the bellboy? Did he stumble upon Jennifer and Mr. Neville, or what was the fracas, exactly?

Mr. Neville

One of the things I liked about Mr. Neville — indeed, all of "Hotel du Lac's" characters — was their ambiguous shading. Are we dealing with someone with good or bad intent, kindness, selfishness? Mr. Neville seemed politely honest, keenly perceptive and appeared, to the near the end of the story, to have Edith's "best interests" at heart. What did you think of him? In any case, despite his surprise failing at the end, I liked how he wasn't a cardboard caricature of the man waiting in the wings.

Edith and David

What did you make of their affair, and what was David's culpability, if you will? I harbored an idea that he really actually loved her but that he was passive in his own right (the family commitments and whatnot), so the understanding that this could only be an affair was sort of how he proceeded. But I might have felt the romance from Edith's point of view and missed the more objective clues.

The scene where she recounts how she watches him interact with his wife and her realization they would make love that night was, I thought, one of the more poignant moments. The emotional pain of being the other woman seemed palpable.

And what of her sending him a telegram at the end that she's coming back. A happy ending? A fool's paradise?

The places we'd go

I have this childlike pleasure in what I guess I’d call resort fiction – like a civilized desert island of charming amenities and quirky characters. Hotel du Lac sounded so marvelous – not a high and narrow bed and veal-colored curtains, mind you, but so many other details: “Its furnishings, although austere, were of excellent quality, its linen spotless, its service impeccable.” Also: “There was no sauna, no hairdresser, and certainly no glass cases displaying items of jewelry.” And a bar where drinking was discouraged! Hehe.

I’m trying to think of other books with this sort of escapist thrill. There’s Agatha Christie’s “At Bertram’s Hotel,” not one of her better stories but all about a fine and old-fashioned hotel of a bygone era with two pages dedicated to a high tea that might tempt you to change your citizenship. Of course there’s Something Going On there, or there’d just be the tea. Or even “The Shining,” creepy though it is, giving over to the hotel as really its own character dwarfing the main players. (I would really love to visit the Overlook Hotel some summer; wouldn’t that be a fine road trip?)

Do any fictional or real-life travel tales bring back fond memories for you? Did anything from Hotel du Lac tickle your fancy?

The places we’d rather not go

Then there’s Hotel du Lac as a sort of rest home for the shady or cast-off well-to-do – I love that! “In this way the hotel was known as a place which was unlikely to attract unfavorable attention, a place guaranteed to provide a restorative sojourn for those whom life had mistreated or merely fatigued. Its name and situation figured in the card indexes of those whose business it is to know such things. Certain doctors knew it, many solicitors knew it, brokers and accountants knew it … Those families who benefit from the periodic absence of one of their more troublesome members treasured it.”

And yet that seemed to cast such an air of melancholy about the place, for all the participants to basically recognize they were society’s damaged goods for one reason or another. You know, they may deserve their own posts, but that common factor changed my perception of each character – to see the inhabitants as more fragile and pitiable save for Mr. Neville and his predatory and perceptive dealings.

Exile

I wrestled with the complexity of Edith’s retreat to Hotel du Lac and how much was suggested, ordered or self-imposed, made all the more elusive by the fact Edith’s “indiscretion” – leaving her groom at the altar – wasn’t revealed until at least two-thirds through the book. Her docility seemed part of finding her life unbearable – she couldn’t be alone, couldn’t sustain her affair on its terms, couldn’t settle for a companion like Geoffrey – and she couldn’t bear to be at home, but she couldn’t bear to be away. So what part of exile was her own will and what part was that suggestive nature of hers to do what others wished – that was one of the more satisfying components of the story. Would she grow up, find herself or what have you was so much more of the tale than whether she reunited with her lover.

A time and a place

What did you initially make of the setting of “Hotel du Lac”? It felt English, or Continental, to me right out the gate, but I struggled with getting the time period in my head. Some of it was the very un-American customs: tea in the salon, dress for dinner, like glamorous travel of a bygone era. But more so there was this premise that Edith was in a social exile and that the notion of a woman of scandal being sent away seems so antiquated. Like reading in an Edith Wharton or Shirley Jackson story of a young woman visiting a faraway relative for precisely ninth months and nobody says a word. The copyright date was ’84, and the clothing brands fit with that, but the story almost seemed timeless, like it could have harkened back 40 years or more.

For November: 'Hotel du Lac'

A Booker Prize winner in 1984 by Anita Brookner. It is borderline novella-length, so it should be a fast read. How about for Nov. 25? It will give me and kc something to mess with during our Thanksgiving shift!

From Wikipedia:
"Romantic novelist Edith Hope is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva, where her friends have advised her to retreat following an unfortunate incident. There she meets other English visitors, including Mrs Pusey and her daughter Jennifer, and an attractive middle-aged man, Mr Neville.

"Edith reaches Hotel du Lac in a state of bewildered confusion at the turn of events in her life. A secret and often lonely affair with a married man and an aborted marriage later, she is banished by her friends, who advise her to go on "probation" so as to "grow up," and "be a woman," atoning for her mistakes.

"Edith comes to the hotel swearing not to change. The silent charms of the hotel and her observations of the guests there all tug at Edith with questions of her identity, forcing her to examine who she is and what she has been."

Sex and the Country

I read on Wikipedia that Carrie from "Sex and the City" is shown reading "The Pursuit of Love" in the second movie. That's interesting because S&C is all about the pursuit of love, of course, but it's also about the friendship among women, with frank discussions about life and fashionable living, which is what Nancy Mitford's books are also about, especially the relationships between Fanny and the Radlett girls, with Davey and Merlin as kind of the flamboyant male sidekicks.

And the Bolter, of course, representing sexual freedom that everyone feels compelled to denounce but also to indulge.

The Frenchman

What did you think of Fabrice?

For me, he was kind of a weak spot in the book. The idea of him was appealing — a rich, imaginative lover for Linda, who had been stuck with such awful duds — but the flesh-and-blood Fabrice was not attractive to me. He seemed kind of domineering and silly, and I'm not sure I bought him as a brave soldier sacrificing for the Republic. It seemed sort of like he had to die, like they both had to die, for that love affair to resonate. Otherwise, Linda would probably eventually have become just another notch on his bedpost. Do you think? Or did you feel more genuine chemistry there than I detected?

Wonderful old ladies

I love when Linda is talking, toward the end of the book, about how she would like to have been part of a "really great generation. I think it's too dismal to have been born in 1911." And Fanny responds: "Never mind, Linda, you will be a wonderful old lady."

How perfect. It got me thinking of people who will be wonderful old ladies, including you two lovelies.

Davey, the fun hypochondriac

One of the great things about literature is its ability to change your sympathies: to make you see some good where you saw only bad before and vice versa. For example, in real life I've always had a strong aversion to hypochondria and any kind of fixation on ailments/health, and in all the fiction I've encountered I can't really recall a sympathetically drawn hypochondriac, except maybe Emma's dad in "Emma," but even he is fairly annoying. Mitford's character Davey, on the other hand, I found really endearing (although he lacks credibility as a heterosexual, in my view ... hehe). I've been trying to figure out why I like him, and I think it's because, obsessed as he is with his own physical condition, he still manages to be genuinely concerned with the well-being of others, like his mission to get some good food on Aunt Sadie's table during the war and the way he takes care of Fanny and treats her like an adult. His health obsession seems more like a weird hobby than the exercise in total self-absorption that such obsessions usually are in life and in fiction.

What did you think of him?

Linda

What did you think of her and the way she approached life? Were you sympathetic?

"Pursuit of Love" — first reaction

Did you like it? Did you laugh?

The Plow That Broke the Plains

We should watch this. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1119800966783091956#

Nesters

Who were your favorite characters in the book? Or whose Dust Bowl story did you find most engaging?

Kim's Pick

For Oct. 1?

Newspaperman

What did you make of John McCarty, editor of the Dalhart Texan? How was he able to maintain his stubborn optimism and defense of the southern plains? What were his motives? And then he left!

Horror and desperation

What were the most heart-wrenching descriptions or moments for you?

Something new

Did anything surprise you in "The Worst Hard Time"? Anything you hadn't heard about the Dust Bowl before?

"The Worst Hard Time"

What did you think? Were the people's stories compelling? Did you like Egan's writing style?

Luck and Finn

One thing I often wondered about while reading: What are we supposed to make of Jake's luck (and the role of luck in life)? He seemed to luck out several times: the two winning horse-race episodes, the potentially sweet house-sitting gig with Sadie, the generous job offer from Madge in Paris, getting the hospital gig so easily, the offer from Hugo to share some of his wealth. He never seemed truly down and out, because opportunities just seemed to fall in his lap. If he didn't avail himself of one, another soon came along. This seemed significant somehow, but I'm not really sure what Murdoch meant for us to make of it.

Also, what did you think of Finn and how he ended up back in Ireland?

Next pick

“The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan

I hope you’re in the mood for some nonfiction. Shall we say Aug. 30?

"Sadie would keep"

KC has pointed out some of the finer lines in "Under the Net," especially about the interstices. I thought there was some maturity to Jake's assessment, when he realized Sadie was the real object of his affection, that she would "keep." Not in a way that a woman would sit at home with her hands folded in her lap until her man caroused on home, but that she had a life and way congruent to his that meant their relationship could pick up again at some later point if it were meant to be.

When I have thought in terms of love, I admit I have not had the maturity to see that ability to let someone remain free and away from me, to percolate into whatever kind of person they were destined to become, if that makes sense. I am more inclined to feel anxious and put some stamp of ownership on that relationship. To claim dibs. Like Jake's comfort level with a life outside the settled-down and up-and-up, he also could part ways with people he loved and hope they meet again if it's meant to be. It was kind of part of that bohemian (am I using the right word? I'm tired) attitude that might have been Murdoch's or that culture at that time or whatnot, some kind of maturity we've rubbed out of our own attitudes about courtship.

The sisters

Again, I couldn't decide whether this was some target toward women, but I found it difficult to see Anna and Sadie as sisters -- they really seemed more like rivals, even without the rivalries over Jake and Hugo. (Jake being more so, I think, a rivalry they could pick up at any time but wasn't missed unless he forced himself into their lives again, as he did.) Anyway, I think there was some absence of affection, or because Jake viewed them as objects of desire, it might not have been something he could have provided as their narrator.

Did you find any more redeeming or deeper qualities in either sister, as Jake eventually did with Sadie?

Writing style

I confess that I sometimes found Murdoch's writing style too densely detailed (mainly too concerned with physical description), and, thus, somewhat slow-moving, but I also found some real gems of phrasing and sheer observation.

Sometimes comic:
To Dave's pupils the world is a mystery; a mystery to which it should be reasonably possible to discover a key. The key would be something of the sort that could be contained in a book of some eight hundred pages. To find the key would not necessarily be a simple matter, but Dave's pupils feel sure that the dedication of between four and ten hours a week, excluding university vacations, should suffice to find it.

Hehe

Sometimes poignant:
As for her ambiguous dismissal of me, I was used to this. Most of the women I know behave in this way, and I have become accustomed to asking no questions, and even to thinking no questions. We all live in the interstices of each other's lives, and we would all get a surprise if we could see everything.

That is just brilliant to me. We all live in the interstices of each other's lives.

How strangely it excites people to see their dogs swimming!

Indeed, it does. Without fail! (I heartily enjoyed the way she portrayed Mars and Jake's fondness for him).

"Some situations can't be unravelled," said Hugo, "they just have to be dropped. The trouble with you, Jake, is that you want to understand everything sympathetically. It can't be done. One must just blunder on. Truth lies in blundering on."

That's when I saw Hugo's real genius.

And sometimes poetic:
Events stream past us like these crowds and the face of each is seen only for a minute. What is urgent is not urgent forever but only ephemerally. All work and all love, the search for wealth and fame, the search for truth, life itself, are made up of moments which pass and become nothing. Yet through this shaft of nothings we drive onward with that miraculous vitality that creates our precarious habitations in the past and the future. So we live; a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came."

Gorgeous.

Favorite parts

One of my favorite scenes in the book was when Jake and his cohorts got tipsy at the pub, then took a late-night dip in the Thames, followed by a snack of foie gras and crackers pilfered from Sadie's flat. The scene was well described. I could almost feel the foul, murky river water — and also the childlike sensation of not caring that it was foul, and the peculiar hunger you get after swimming. That's kind of a universal human experience, I think — the need to commune with the elements, water and night, and to feel like it's a kind of right, whether it's trespassing or dangerous or stupid or whatever. Jake's nighttime expedition after Anna in Paris also had that feel: the pursuit of a primal, if elusive, goal.

Although I thought some of the scenes rambled on a bit too long, I did enjoy the tours through London and Paris, all the place names and associations and the sense that the cities were themselves characters in the book. It didn't seem like a story that could be set just anywhere. It reminded me a little of George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London." They should release an edition of Murdoch's book with maps of all of Jake's rambles.

The good life

I want to be Mrs. Tinckham when I grow up! A cheap shop full of old books, where secrets are made and kept and cats guard the perimeter.

Actually, there was a broad appeal to me of the bohemian life Jake and the other characters seemed to lead, bumping about from one situation and odd job to the next, so unlike our culture and the requisite ladder. It's also a really useful setting for a romantic comedy that one can be on one adventure to the next when there's no job to report to. I can't imagine the comfort of living that way, though. Was that just a different time and a place? Did it affect Jake's philosophy at all? Did being an orderly change that for him?

Jake and the women

This is my second reading of "Under the Net" since many years ago, and the narrator, Jake, seems very different from what I remembered. I forgot he was such a connoisseur of women, their charms and their hangups. He was willing to love them for both but had to be on standby as their critic. Did you see that as well? Since it is the only book I've read by Iris Murdoch, I wondered, too, how she went about tackling a male narrative voice. Were the criticisms she piled on the women (save for the delightful Mrs. Tinckham) her personal POV or how she thought a man would perceive them?

Toothsome or tedious?

I kind of sense that the discussion of this book has petered out, but I still thought it mandatory to mention the title "White Teeth" and whether it — and all the oral references, from Clara getting her buck teeth knocked out to Irie's plan to take up dentistry (and all the toothy references in between) resonated with you at all. Clever or heavy-handed?

Christy's pick: "Under the Net"

"Under the Net" is an Iris Murdoch novel, which I read a long time ago. It's sort of an existential romantic comedy with one of literature's best dog characters.

We could start July 5 to give ourselves the holiday weekend to read, if we can't start it sooner.

Men!

Did you get the sense that Zadie Smith took kind of a dim view of men as a group? Did you think her female characters were much more likable on the whole? (I don't mean this to sound like a leading question!)

Comedy?

Maybe this is related to the narrative voice, but how did the overall tone of the book strike you? Did its comic elements take charge and make the book essentially a comedy? Or did the more serious themes still rise to the top for you?

I'll admit at the outset that while I heartily enjoyed many of the book's comic moments, I also found that they somewhat distracted from themes that I wanted to see developed in a more serious, poignant way — like the experience of being a foreigner in a Western country and how you might realistically be driven to violence. We saw a lot of characters who felt displaced and unsettled and we were told how sad and miserable they were, but the comic tone kind of undermined some of that for me.

Supermouse

What did you think of the Supermouse plot line?

Narrator

What did you think of the narrative voice? I was kind of thrown by it sometimes because I couldn't decide whether its tone was consistent. It seemed to veer between semiformal and detached to overly casual and involved. One thing in particular really stood out: its use of slang. For example, when the narrator is talking in the narrator's voice about Millat, it says he "got a lot of pu**y." Isn't that an odd way for the narrator to talk? A character, sure. But the narrator? I've seen this with other authors as well, and it always throws me because it seems like the writer is trying to inject a certain personal, casual tone, trying to lend the narrative voice a kind of hip, young personality or something without committing to an actual embodied creation. It's just a disembodied voice ... Thoughts?

Least favorite

Which character did you think was drawn the least sympathetically? (Maybe that overlaps with "whom did you like the least?" but I can also see it as a different question.)

Plot

Did you find the plot engaging? Did it seem smoothly drawn to you or a bit clunky here and there?

Characters in "White Teeth"

This novel has a fairly large and diverse cast of characters. Which character's point of view do you most identify with? Or were most sympathetic to?

Catharsis

David's graphic essay on the process of starting "Stitches": http://www.publishersweekly.com/images/DSmall_web_650px.jpg?fullurl=/contents/images/DSmall_web_650px.jpg (click on it to enlarge)

Brothers

David's brother is present in the book, but with the exception of a couple of scenes, he's pretty invisible. Here is an interesting section of an interview with David about his brother:

Do you have any particular hopes for the book?

Something remarkable has happened because of it, already. About two years ago in February, I got a call from my editor. He was very concerned about the latest memoir publishing scandal, where the publisher was frantically shredding 75,000 copies of a book by a woman in L.A. who had claimed she'd grown up in a drug culture; her sister wrote to the newspaper and said she was lying.

Anyway, he quite rightly didn't want that to happen to his publisher, and not on his watch, so he said, "David, tell me, is there anybody still alive who might disagree with your viewpoint of these events?"

I said, "Well, I do have this brother." He said, "Have you shown it to him?" I said, "No. I told him I was doing it because he's in it, but it's not about him." And he said, "You have to show it to him." I said, "Bob, the last time I spoke with my brother, I told him to go fuck himself and that I never wanted to talk to him or hear about him again." And he said, "That's too bad, but you've got to show him the book."

So I emailed my brother and asked him if he would take a look at it. And actually I thought, because his wife had died about two months before, it might be interesting to him, to take his mind off it. I sent him a copy of the ARC.

After four days, I called him up, and I said, "What did you think of the book?" There was a long, dreadful pause on the other end of the phone. And then my brother spoke in his sepulchral, Nixonian tones, and he said, "David, your book blew me away."

I said, "Really?" He said, "Yes. It's like a snapshot of my youth," his voice getting more lively. He said, "I don't know how you did it. It's like you brought everyone back to life. They look the way they looked. Everything's exactly the way it was."

I said, "That's wonderful!" He said, "Do you mind if I show it to my therapist?" And I said, "No! What a great idea. And congratulations, by the way, on being in therapy." Then he wanted to know if he could show it to his sons, and I said, "Yes, that will probably help them understand you better."

Miraculous to say, four months later he was at my house. This is somebody whom I hadn't spoken to in fifty years. He came to our house, and he spent four days...

I'm sorry, how many years did you say?

Well, he's sixty-seven and I'm sixty-four. He might have been ten and I was six when our relationship broke off. We hated each other while we were in the house, and then he moved away, and I never really talked to him again. When we did it was always difficult.

I think what was basically going on — no, I know what was going on: Neither of us wanted anything or anybody in our lives that reminded us of our young lives.

Once this book was there, both of us could see these people again, and see them going through these situations in a way that made us both realize we had nothing to do with the anguish in that family, and there's no reason to feel guilty about it anymore.

I'll tell you, if nothing else happens with this book, it would be worth doing it just for that.

David's dreams

The dream sequences in the book were really great. What do you make of David's recurring dream of crawling through successively smaller doors into the bombed interior of a church?

Next pick

Start on May 26?

Mother

In his epilogue, David sounds pretty forgiving of his mother, seemingly attributing her horrible coldness to her health problems and secret life as a lesbian. Do you suppose this is a coping mechanism? Or a just a very mature show of empathy?

Sounds of silence

I was struck by all the silence in the book. It was amazing how much of the story was told with only the drawings.

Pages would go by without any dialogue between the characters. Most of the emotions are communicated through glares or little coughs or slamming cabinets. It seemed almost fitting that after growing up in a household of silence, David's voice is taken by cancer.

Alice

What do you think is David's fascination with "Alice in Wonderland"? He dresses up as Alice, he fantasizes falling down the rabbit hole in his drawing, he even draws his psychologist as the White Rabbit.

Graphic memoir

What did you think of "Stitches"? Did you like the graphic format?

Kim and I have talked before about how nonfiction works better in the graphic style than fiction. Did you find that to be true with "Stitches"? And why do you think that is?

The come-to-mother moment

I love the scene in the book where Henry's mom tells him she's ashamed of him for "thinking like that," that is, for only thinking of Miss Channing and Mr. Reed and their romance and never once wondering where Mrs. Reed was as they were happily strolling on the beach. At that moment, Henry realizes that his mother has seen the whole story from Mrs. Reed's perspective, and it's an absolute shock to him because he was convinced that there was only one reading of the situation. He whispers, in what struck me as the emotional high point of the book,"I'm sorry, Mother."

Then he writes:

What she did next stunned me with its uncompromising force. "You're all alike, Henry, all you men."

(Honestly, I had a flicker of respect for her just then, bitter as she was, just because most mothers seem to think their sons are the exception and easily excuse their sexist mentality instead of calling them to the mat on it! Not that I think Henry was sexist per se, but it's good for all people to be forced into an awareness of this is how the other half lives).

She stared at me for one long, ghastly moment, then turned and walked away, leaving me in a world that had begun to move again, though differently than it had before, filled with greater complications, a weave of consequences and relations that seemed larger than romance, deeper and more enduring, though still distant from my understanding, a world I'd only just briefly glimpsed, as it were, through my mother's eyes.

It's his moment of maturity, of compassion, of realizing, to paraphrase Hamlet, that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

And later, this notion is reinforced when he asks Sarah why Miss Channing and Mr. Reed are such cowards, why they don't just do what they want. And Sarah says, "They aren't cowards" (presumably because it's harder to not give in to personal urges than to let them hold sway).

Then Henry ruminates:

... we have never discovered why, given the brevity of life and the depth of our need and the force of our passions, we do not pursue our own individual happiness with an annihilating zeal, throwing all else to the wind. We only know that we don't, and that all our goodness, our only claim to glory, resides in this inexplicable devotion to things other than ourselves.

So he develops this sense of empathy and the belief that you must consult things other than your own passions as you move through life, which is good, but where did that get him? He gets this advice, makes these discoveries, and what is he left with? Does he abandon passion and romance, in that black-and-white mentality Erin noted? His father instills in him a sense of responsibility that is compassionate but stern, and his mother instills in him a sense more harsh than loving, and he's surrounded by adults in loveless relationships, who seem only in them because of a vow they made ages ago ... What is he supposed to think? That once you commit to someone, even if it turns out to be a bad choice, that you are duty-bound to stay your whole life? That that's what being a "good man" is? And yet it's terrible to be self-centered, too. I can see why he felt paralyzed and afraid to live! There were no role models for him of people who successfully incorporated romance and duty into their lives.

Responsibility

Because nearly everyone in this story dies, and Henry probably dies in spirit, could you lay responsibility in any one place here? More than one place?

Tragic means

This is the second novel by Cook I have read, and in both cases I was impressed by how the mysteries just unravel -- more tragic and chilling than all the foreshadowing properly portended -- and when you think you've heard the worst of the tale, the author delivers one more chilling revelation.

In this case it was pretty clear most of the key players wouldn't survive, so it would become how it all happened that had to emotionally hit the reader. Henry's role in the turn of events (provoking Mrs. Reed) was the first for me -- then Sarah's death as a bystander. But when I thought the worst of it was over, I was stunned to read the part about Henry going into the water and deciding to leave Mrs. Reed in the car. I mean, I think from the description of the blood flowing from her mouth that he had found a dying woman, but there must have been that moment on either side of the window where they look at each other and both know Henry will not fish her out. Why do you think he would have done that?

Miss Channing and Henry

There were times in the story that I found it remarkable how noble was Henry's admiration for Miss Channing, that he recognized her beauty but could better judge her as a teacher, mentor, friend. At times I thought Miss Channing and Mr. Reed were more like Henry's substitute parents. And yet Henry was nearly ready for college and Miss Channing quite young herself, that it seemed likely they only had six or seven years of an age difference. Was it odd to you at all that he didn't see her through a more sexual perspective, or could that have been rooted as deep as his other inhibitions, something he would be too polite to imply?

Chatham

What did you think of the small town Henry described throughout the book, a place both beautiful and Gothic, but also repressive and dull? He said of Miss Channing's arrival: "She drew in a deep breath, grasped the iron rail, and made her way down the stairs and into the village where no great artist had ever lived, no great event ever happened, save for those meted out by sudden storms or the torturous movement of geologic time." What was it for Henry, anyway -- a cage? A giant albatross? A safe haven from taking any more chances at life that could hurt another person?

Small town life

I spent most of the novel wondering why Henry, who so badly wanted to leave town and see the world, would instead remain the rest of his life. His revelations toward the end explained why he imprisoned himself there without a family of his own, but I wondered why he never visited (in such a small town) all the relevant sites of the Chatham School Affair or its other living victim, Alice Craddock. What do you make of that?

Next pick

"Stitches" by David Small

I thought we could revisit the graphic novel for the next pick. This is a memoir of a shockingly unhappy childhood that hopefully won't be too depressing.

British understatement

I thought this was a great description of William's personality — and also a funny way of saying how Brits and Germans differed 700 years ago in the same way as they do today:

Adso says of William: "I never understood when he was jesting. In my country, when you joke you say something and then you laugh very noisily, so everyone shares in the joke. But William laughed only when he said serious things, and remained very serious when he was presumably joking."

(cl, it occurs to me we work with a lot of Germans).

There are also some funny stereotypes of the French and Italians and Greeks.