Bookstorm

My girlfriend is a Jane Austen purist; she took one look at the first line of Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and groaned and swore never to read it. In fact, it's become a contentious issue between us: I found the book dumb and mildly diverting, but she considers it blasphemy and covers her ears whenever I mention it. And I don't blame her for doing so. The implication is that Pride and Prejudice is only readable when mixed with cartoonish violence, that the addition of stupid only enhances what's already a nearly-perfect novel.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is as stupid as it sounds, but it owes its success to concept rather than execution. (The execution is, of course, lazy and uninspired.) I'm not an Austen purist. She's a fine writer, but I haven't canonized her. I don't mind seeing her work suffused with "all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem." It sounds like trying to mix oil and water, but if people can remix Beethoven, why not Austen?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies doesn't denigrate the original, but, more tellingly, Grahame-Smith's reworking is a fine example of missed opportunity. A little subtlety would've gone a long way. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is satire, but Grahame-Smith seems to have forgotten that Pride and Prejudice is also satire. Used thoughtfully, the zombies and ninjas could've underscored Austen's bite and humor. Instead, Grahame-Smith employs them in a numbing repetition of failed comedy. One thinks that only Grahame-Smith was amused. His execution, so hasty and messy, desensitizes us by blunting the impact of the original. Halfway through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I was reminded of Quentin Tarantino's films: the violence becomes so tedious and pointless that the end result is utter boredom.

But that didn't stop me from picking up Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters's Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. I'm sure it's just as stupid as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but as niche books, they're amusing complements to your Austen library. Sam Anderson, reviewing the "sequel," perfectly sums up my feelings: "It’s hard to say, in the end, if this is an homage, an exploitation, a deconstruction, or just a 300-page parlor trick."

With Ulysses and Us, Declan Kiberd wants to rescue James Joyce's Ulysses from academia and put it back where it rightfully belongs--with the common reader. Obviously, there's an almost-insurmountable problem with this: most people won't read Ulysses at all. Even if we grant that Joyce himself didn't take his book seriously--as he wrote to a friend in 1922, "[O]n the honor of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it"--its reputation as difficult literature is enough to frighten most common readers. It's going to take a lot more than Ulysses and Us to convince people to dust off their Joyce. If Kiberd wants to win, though, he might start by killing the subtitle of Ulysses and Us; The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce's Masterpiece doesn't sound like something that brings Ulysses to the proletariat.

Here's how I'd do it:

Hey, bloke. Want to read a dirty book? A book that was banned because it's so obscene and yucky? A book with dirty, filthy fucking and fart jokes? A book about bars and beer and broads? A book featuring whores and desperate housewives? A book about a guy who has weird sexual fetishes? A book that actually spells out the word cunt? Well, then I've got the book for you!

Now Ulysses is flying off shelves.

Here's some literary silliness, courtesy of Jodi Picoult's The Pact:

"Daddy says," Kate beamed, "I can get my ears pierced if it's okay with you. Today. After lunch."

"What a terrific idea!" Gus said, turning to James. "Can you take her?" He did not hear Gus at first, because he was reveling in the smells that she had brought into the stuffy dining room--the wintergreen scent of the snow outside, the apple of her hair conditioner, and the lingering smell of her perfume. But there was something else, something deep and tropical that he could not put a name to ... what was it?

[ ... ]

James sighed and turned toward Kate. "We'll go to the jewelry store after lunch," he told her. He faced his wife again, intending to ask why she'd bothered coming all the way to the restaurant when she was just going right back, but was stopped again by the smell of her. Something was different, he realized. After she visited Chris she always came home smelling of jail, stale and confining, a scent that stayed in her clothes and her skin until they were scrubbed. She had been to visit Chris today, she said, but that smell was missing. There was something else in its place--that exotic element, which James suddenly recognized as the sweet, heated scent of a lie.

So, to paraphrase: if you're talking with your wife and she suddenly starts smelling like mangoes, what you're really smelling is the lie she's just told.

I highly doubt Dante's Inferno requires a full-blown introduction--if you're reading along, I'll leave that to your chosen translator (mine happens to be Anthony Esolen)--but I think a few notes on Canto One are in order. (I'll be expanding on some of Esolen's notes. And, since this is the most allegorical canto in the Inferno, it's worth looking at in a little more depth.)

• "Midway upon the journey of our life ...": Dante is about thirty-five years old--middle-aged--when he descends into hell. (Furthermore, this line fixes the year at 1300; Dante, born in 1265, would have been thirty-five in 1300.) Also, since the Inferno is theological, consider Psalm 90:10: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten"--or seventy years, in modern parlance.
• "... I found myself in a dark wilderness ...": This line is interesting: as allegory, it represents sin, confusion, and corruption. But the sin and corruption of what? The papacy, certainly: in Canto Nine, Dante places Pope Nicholas III in the eighth circle of hell--specifically, in the pouch reserved for Simonists. The dark wood also represents corruption of politics: Dante began work on his Commedia while in exile, after the collapse of his political party, the White Guelphs. With the rival party, the Black Guelphs, in power, Dante was tried in absentia for crimes such as embezzlement and graft, and threatened with death by fire if he ever returned to Florence. If we examine Dante's Convivio, and remember Dante's age, the second line also refers to the corruption of youth: "So the youth, who enters into the wandering woods of this life, would never know the right way to go, were it not shown to him by his elders." (This line from the Convivio also explains Virgil's presence in both the Inferno and the Purgatorio.) I've always been struck by this line for one other reason: Dante places himself as both the subject and object of the verb, which enhances the personal nature of his own sin. He finds himself lost.
• "... the sun was mounting higher with those stars ...": Scholars agree the Inferno begins on April 7, 1300--Maundy Thursday, or the day before Good Friday. (See Canto Twenty-one, lines 112 to 114.) Canto One also gives a good indication of how fast-paced the poem really is. Dante spends all of Maundy Thursday with the three beasts. By the time he and Virgil enter ante-hell (Canto Two), it's already Good Friday.
• "... that just son of Anchises ...": This is where Virgil's Aeneid comes in handy: Anchises' son was Aeneas, the hero of the Aeneid and the founder of Rome.
• "... until the Greyhound comes ...": Dante is alluding, vaguely, to a savior, though almost certainly not Christ. Scholars aren't sure who or what the Greyhound symbolizes, but one theory is that it's Cangrande della Scala, one of Dante's benefactors during the poet's exile. (Cane grande means great dog.) Depending on the translation, this could imply a number of meanings; as Esolen notes, "The Greyhound's victory is to be seen in apocalyptic terms, for the beasts fornications recall those of the whore of Babylon ..."; Robert Pinsky's translation is quieter: "Many are the beasts she mates: there will be more / Until the Hound comes ..."; he makes no mention of the "apocalyptic" nature of the Hound. (Incidentally, while I appreciate Pinsky's subtle Inferno translation, I don't recommend it for Dante initiates. Esolen, a professor, brings out Dante's meaning; Pinsky, a poet, brings out Dante's music--his terza rima. Translators will inevitably make sacrifices--music or meaning. Unless you read Italian, you can't have it both ways.)
• "... so I may see Saint Peter's gate ...": When reading Dante, you'll have to discard your Sunday school notions of heaven. In the Commedia, salvation begins at purgatory. Contrary to popular (evangelical) belief, Saint Peter's gate isn't located in paradise; it's in purgatory. (The Inferno is a Christian work, but with a distinctly Catholic theology.) Consider Canto Nine of Dante's Purgatorio (translated by Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander):

'From Peter do I hold them, and his instruction was
to err in opening rather than in keeping locked,
if but the soul fell prostrate at my feet.'


Then he pushed one door of the sacred portal open,
saying, 'Enter, but I warn you
he who looks back must then return outside.'

Next: Canto Two. This is where you'll need the Aeneid.

My review of Ben Greenman's Please Step Back is live.

I'm taking Sarah's long-standing dare by reading a Jodi Picoult novel--in this case, The Pact. And I'm finding--surprise!--it's just as bad as I thought it would be.

The story, so far, is that generic teenager Christopher and his generic girlfriend, Emily, who have known each other (literally) all their lives, are out on a date, when Emily is--you guessed it!--is shot in the head. Can you see where this is going? Yes, Christopher is accused of the murder, and many, many questions come up regarding his personal demons, and the strength of familial bond is sorely tested after every revelation (Christopher, who's seventeen, drinks!). Then Christopher is arrested. He stands trial for Emily's murder. He's acquitted. And everyone just sort of goes on his or her merry way, changed somehow, but now stronger because of everything they've been through. Emotions will be vague, but there is crying and forgiveness.

Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm only three chapters in, and Christopher hasn't been arrested yet. Hell, he hasn't even been accused. (But he will be, I'm certain; the implication is already there.) There hasn't been a lot of crying, though. The marionettes are hopping along, trying to be strong--which is to say, stoic--and trying to stop the unraveling that's sure to come. (Police detectives, though kind and female, are meddlesome fuckers, aren't they?)

But The Pact leaves me wondering why people even bother reading this shit. Isn't Lifetime dedicated to the kind of sentimental tripe that Picoult regularly churns out? Even the dialogue reads like it was transcribed from an atrocious Hallmark television movie. Yet the biggest problem I'm having with The Pact is how passive Picoult is. (This is a bigger problem than you might think.) Maybe she's too focused on getting it right--reading the acknowledgements, one is supposed to believe that she did a lot of research for her novel--but she has no interest in her story--or even storytelling, for that matter--or her characters. The Pact isn't drama; it's a dramatization, a series of events stitched together without structure or forethought. And it sure as hell isn't tragic--we know nothing about Emily, so her death is really nothing more than a linchpin for Picoult to start in with themes of friendship, family, and conservatism. She'd rather use "shocking" revelations to propel the plot forward. Characterization comes during internal musings after a bit of dialogue. And all this makes for dry, dull, predictable reading.

Picoult seems like an author trying to live up to expectations. And the blurbs tell us what critics, and readers, expect from her: a novel that's "captivating" (Raleigh News & Observer), "suspenseful" (Detroit Free Press), "heart-wrenching" (Orlando Sentinel), "provocative" (Publishers Weekly), "engrossing" (People), and "beautiful" (Tampa Tribune). Sure, The Pact is readable, but it isn't interesting--for that, blame Picoult's lazy writing. (But when you're targeting teenage suicide, you don't really have to put forth any effort; the headlines will do all the work for you.)

Her passivity, her disinterest in drama and fiction, coupled with her focus on plot, leads us to a bigger problem: she and a host of other popular novelists have helped breed millions of passive, disinterested readers. By dumbing down her story and characters, Picoult is limiting the reader's involvement. Like Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, The Pact revels in vapidity. You don't have to think about it, as it contains no sense of drama. Picoult, like Sebold, is hoping that you're stupid enough to let her manipulate your emotions. She's hoping that you've seen enough television movies to fill in the blanks. The result (and irony), of course, is that such books are entirely empty of emotion. You come away from them feeling--well, feeling nothing at all.

Since jumping aboard the Infinite Summer reading group (okay, bandwagon), I've given a lot of thought about starting my own reading group (or book club, as my girlfriend would say). The question, naturally, was, What the hell should we read? I wanted to bust heads by suggesting Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, but, alas, I'm late to that party. (And let's be honest: I didn't think anyone would be clamoring to read Gravity's Rainbow, even in a group setting. That's madness.) I also considered offering up Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (rejected due to length), George Eliot's Middlemarch (also rejected due to length, and because I'm not quite ready to read it), Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones (rejected because, from the little that I've read, it isn't very good) and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (rejected because Oprah already tainted it).

Then I remembered that Sarah hasn't yet read Dante's Inferno. (I shit you not.)

This is a pretty happy coincidence, because I read Dante at least once a year. I'm willing to bet you've already read it, but the Inferno rewards repeat readings. It's full of nice discussion points (for instance: which level of hell would Dante consign George W. Bush?). There are numerous translations--it's one of the most-translated works--from which to choose. (I'll be reading Anthony Esolen's translation this year, but if you're just starting out with Dante, I recommend John Ciardi's translation.) And the punishments are pretty creative and freaky. So really, you can't go wrong.

This group read is more for Sarah's benefit, but naturally, you're welcome to join in. (The more, the merrier, as they say.) We'll kick things off on September twentieth. In the meantime, brush up on your classics--in particular, Virgil and Homer. You're going to need them.

Google's book search--something I've ignored, out of sheer indifference--is going through some amusing growing pains:

Start with publication dates. To take Google's word for it, 1899 was a literary annus mirabilis, which saw the publication of Raymond Chandler's Killer in the Rain, The Portable Dorothy Parker, André Malraux's La Condition Humaine, Stephen King's Christine, The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, Raymond Williams's Culture and Society 1780-1950, and Robert Shelton's biography of Bob Dylan, to name just a few. And while there may be particular reasons why 1899 comes up so often, such misdatings are spread out across the centuries. A book on Peter F. Drucker is dated 1905, four years before the management consultant was even born; a book of Virginia Woolf's letters is dated 1900, when she would have been 8 years old. Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities is dated 1888, and an edition of Henry James's What Maisie Knew is dated 1848.

[ ... ]

Google acknowledges the incorrect dates but says they came from the providers. It's true that Google has received some groups of books that are systematically misdated, like a collection of Portuguese-language works all dated 1899. But a very large proportion of the errors are clearly Google's own doing. A lot of them arise from uneven efforts to automatically extract a publication date from a scanned text. A 1901 history of bookplates from the Harvard University Library is correctly dated in the library's catalog. Google's incorrect date of 1574 for the volume is drawn from an Elizabethan armorial bookplate displayed on the frontispiece. An 1890 guidebook called London of To-Day is correctly dated in the Harvard catalog, but Google assigns it a date of 1774, which is taken from a front-matter advertisement for a shirt-and-hosiery manufacturer that boasts it was established in that year.

Then there are the classification errors, which taken together can make for a kind of absurdist poetry. H.L. Mencken's The American Language is classified as Family & Relationships. A French edition of Hamlet and a Japanese edition of Madame Bovary are both classified as Antiques and Collectibles (a 1930 English edition of Flaubert's novel is classified under Physicians, which I suppose makes a bit more sense.) An edition of Moby Dick is labeled Computers; The Cat Lover's Book of Fascinating Facts falls under Technology & Engineering. And a catalog of copyright entries from the Library of Congress is listed under Drama (for a moment I wondered if maybe that one was just Google's little joke).

I wouldn't call it a "little" joke; looks like Google's entire book-scanning enterprise is a joke, even if it's unintentional.

It's a good time for a round-up ...

• At The New York Review of Books, Sasha Weiss talks with Fintan O'Toole about Flann O'Brien, postmodernism, and Irish literature after James Joyce.
• Here's Robert Birnbaum on Tom Rob Smith's The Secret Speech. And once you've read that, read an excerpt. (I enjoyed Child 44, but I'm not completely sold on The Secret Speech.)
• There's a literary revolution afoot, and it's coming from the least likely place: your supermarket.
• Fellas: if you ever want to play MacGyver, make sure you have these three books on hand. (Conversely, ladies, if your husband ever wants to play MacGyver, make sure those books don't fall into his hands.)

Currently reading and recently read:

• Rasskazy by Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker (editors). Russians are still writing some damnably good fiction, and Rasskazy might be all the proof one needs. (I'm currently at Arkady Babchenko's "The Diesel Stop," which is a lot like Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.)
• The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth. A novel written entirely in verse--even the dedication is poetry--might seem like a puzzling endeavor, but Seth largely succeeds in doing this. The Golden Gate starts off very slowly, and Seth seems unsure of himself for almost half the novel, but the book eventually finds its legs. It reads like a modern Jane Austen.
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Yes, I'm still reading it. Yes, it's still weird. Yes, I'm still gunning for a September finish. I dare you to read it.
• Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez. I admit it: I haven't been reading this as much as I should. In fact, I'm still on chapter two, and have been for over a week. But don't worry, Rachel, I'll get back to it soon.
• Hitler by Ian Kershaw. Right: I'm probably a sick guy for being so shamelessly fascinated with Adolf Hitler. Or maybe I'm one of the few who can actually admit to being fascinated with him. I've only read the introductory essays to Hitler, and I've realized I'm not necessarily interested in Hitler himself--by most accounts, and judging from Mein Kampf, he was dull and mind-numbingly pretentious, and led an aimless life--but rather, the times in which he lived. But the time and the Führer are inseparable. As Kershaw writes, "Hitler's impact can only be grasped through the era which created him ..."