Thoughts Concerning Atlas Shrugged

The worst thing about this book is that it has been cited #2 — preceded only by the Bible — as the most influential work on American lives.

The second worst thing about this book: just about everything else.

I mean, I appreciated the idea of it. And it's the idea of it (along with the ingenious title) that prompted me to ever pick it up in the first place. After all, I agree with most the basics: society would cease to exist as we know it, without brilliant new ideas and honest competition. Communism is bad, capitalism is good. Et cetera.

In fact, this nearly 1,200 page novel is a testament to laissez-faire economics (it's no wonder Allen Greenspan was one of the first members of Rand's inner circle). But it's the heartless rationale underlying Rand's objectivist philosophy that drove me bonkers.

I mean, her heroes and heroines are miserable people — and not just because they're stifled by a controlling futuristic government that punishes the successful (now very realistic, I must admit)... but because they're devoid of any real feeling, apart from a zeal for work and occasional bouts of nihilism. And those who do demonstrate any... compassion... are exposed as lunatics and/or sadistic frauds.

Add to that every pedagogical viewpoint spews forth like diarrhea of the mouth in very unlikely settings (with Rand having one character ask another a question that leads to 2 pages worth of rambling on sundry economic inanities), and it was difficult... nay, impossible, for me to side with those Americans (apparently I'm in the minority) who have allowed Rand to so greatly influence their lives.

But you know, in a way that makes a lot of sense: because I seem to be running into a lot of people who don't give a damn about anyone else. But I digress.

There is one scene early on that I really liked — a scene that so clearly defined what I actually liked about Rand — not to mention, a situation I'm very much so familiar with:

The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, wakes up from a train ride to realize the locomotive is no longer moving. She walks outside to find the engineer and the rest of the crew all standing around the signal, which had beckoned them to stop. And because it remained red, they refused to move on even though there was no viable reason for it to remain red for as long as it had.

Dagny insists that they continue and — as COO of the railroad — promises that she will accept blame if anything bad should happen as they continue down the line despite the warning signal.

But this is very early on in the book, and Rand spends the next 150 pages reiterating the same point over and over, in a far less poignant fashion.

And I limit my knowledge to the remaining 150 pages because I didn't bother finishing this book. I felt like I got the point after that scene, and everything else was wasted time.

I mean, even the single line that defines this novel — "Who is John Galt?" — loses its luster within the first 20 pages, as Rand couldn't let the reader figure out what it meant... she has someone come out and tell us exactly what it means. Seems she was writing this book for "looters" rather than "strikers" (her terms), assuming her audience was incapable of thinking for themselves.

Every time "Who is John Galt" is repeated after this initial expose, I was as irritated as Dagny was (though for different reasons). I can only be hit over the head with a point so many times before I forget why I wanted to read the book in the first place.

I'm also a little disappointed I didn't make it all of the way to Galt's Gulch, but I simply haven't the patience (nor the life left in my years) to listen to her hapless characters drone on about the same thing. So I skipped around and got the basics after I finished the first 200 pages.

And so: one of my favorite radio programs, Sound Opinions, rates albums on a "Buy It, Burn It or Trash It" scale.

If a comparable scale were to exist for literature, I'd direct all of you to Spark Notes to catch the highlights of Atlas Shrugged. It certainly makes some interesting points and contains some downright brilliant insights — and the basics of the plot are certainly interesting — but so much else is pedantic drivel. It'd be worth the read if it were, say, 500 pages. But 1,100+ of the same thing over and over?

That's just bad editing.

So, uh, sorry America. I don't like this book as much as you.

Of Fiction & Reality

Everyone who reads does so for a reason.

Whether it's to learn, to understand, to research... or even to escape.

And I admit now that I've spent most of my adult life reading to fulfill the first three categories. And yet, though, on rare occasions I find something that truly allows me to escape.

One such book was released this past weekend. And though, yes, it's a "children's" tale, there's something to be said for the pleasure I derive from reading it. I truly look forward to it, and can scarcely pull it away from my eyes, even to work.

And so, yes, I admit: I've been reading it on lunch breaks. I've been reading it at the gym. I've been reading it before I drift off to sleep.

But before you judge me, remember this:

I become so engrossed in the text — so busy transforming words into images and allowing myself to be that proverbial fly-on-the-wall — that I can hardly turn the pages fast enough. And so when lunch is over and I walk away from the book, I sometimes have a difficult time adjusting to the stark contrast between the two.

I am leaving, for lack of a better comparison, a high drama world of witches and wizards, slowly reacquainting myself with a reality I'd prefer, quite honestly, to not acknowledge:

Loved ones suffering without the insurance to cover them. Families torn apart by custody papers. Wars with daily death tolls spread across the news. Brothers who aspire to join them.

And always, still, those broken sirens that wail over and around skyscrapers like an injured T-Rex.

For brief moments in the day — those moments when I steal away into another world — I think less of these things. I escape, quite literally, and I'm not the least bit ashamed for it (though my explanations surely have you thinking otherwise).

Now here's the thing:

Sometimes we cannot escape. Sometimes life presents us with experiences that no words, fictional or otherwise, can soothe. The spell is broken and — despite our best efforts — we read the same words (the same sentences) over and over, unable to comprehend even the simplest passage. It is during these times that our stomachs burn with a sort of anxiety (like now) that knows no language.

You try to read. To escape.

Only to realize that you cannot — for the life of you — turn the page.

Of Secrets & Slytherin

The first book in the Harry Potter series was released sometime between my junior year in high school and my sophomore year in college (go ahead — do the math... you've probably already guestimated my age with some accuracy, anyway).

I don't recall the exact year, as I refused to read it. I figured a book that received so much press was likely to be pulp, and so I snubbed my nose and read things like Melville and Shakespeare in-between Calculus exams.

Yes, I was that kind of girl.

The mere mention of wizards and muggles and Rowling and — yes — even the utterance of the letters "J" and "K" would send a shiver of disgust down my elitist spine.

But then I changed my major from Biology/pre-med to English, and took a class in children's lit as an elective.

I cannot begin to explain to you the horror I felt upon seeing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on the syllabus. I mean, sure, Alice in Wonderland, Tuck Everlasting, Wind in the Willows — these are books I expected to see on there. But not, for the love of God, not Harry Potter.

Geek that I am, my snobbery for current popular literature was no match for my drive towards a decent GPA, and it was with a sigh and a smirk that I first cracked the cover.

What happened from there is the stuff of Hogwart's history.

I was little short of in love.

I couldn't read fast enough and yet however fast I read, it was too fast, as finishing the book likewise meant my own journey down Privet Drive was over.

When we discussed the book in class, I had to contain my excitement, for fear that my peers might discover (and thus hang me for) my newfound fascination. And yet, still, secretly I hurried on to other books in the series, eventually catching up with everything that had been published, and then anxiously awaiting every subsequent release.

Skip ahead a couple years to grad school, where I discovered a few other closet fans — we seemed to find comfort in numbers and so would proudly stack our copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix betwixt Lolita and The Taming of the Shrew (this is blaspheme to some of you, I know).

We discussed characters, analyzed plots, and yet — somehow — managed to do all of this without spoiling the fun of reading what some academics condemn as being "escapist" literature (which it is in a way, sure, but if a story is nevertheless well-written, why is "escapism" necessarily a bad thing).

We watched the films with a similar sort of zeal, indulging in the literature and the movies — and even the occasional board game — without taking it much further than that.

And I must admit, I expect this July to be the highlight of my 2007, with the final book (number 7) and the fifth film both slated to release this summer.

When I e-mailed a couple friends suggesting we have a reunion in Orlando in 2009 — and further lamented, with a humorous nod, that having two big Harry Potter releases in the same month wouldn't leave me with much to look forward to for the rest of the year — one friend e-mailed this back to me.

OK, OK. I get the point.

I have a problem. But this is one indulgence I don't mind giving in to.

(Besides, comparing myself to those losers* gives me a reason to feel a little better about myself.)

And for those of you as yet unconverted: go ahead, make fun of me. Judge me.

I'll be so busy planning my Hermione costume for the midnight release of the next film, that I won't even notice.**



*Irony not only noted, but intended more so for sarcastic purposes
**Just kidding. —I'll notice.

The Giving (Up) Tree

Sure, all the hipsters love him. And his love affair with another noted writer was the stuff of narcotic-laced fairy tales.

But I can't help it. Try as I might, I can't bring myself to finish his masterpiece.

I first picked up Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer several years ago, at the recommendation of a friend. But I was a literature student at the time, and if there's one thing we know about literature students, it's that they never have time to read the things they want to.

So after "re-checking" it out of the library three or four times, I eventually gave up. But I was somewhat tormented by that sense of failing to complete an objective, and I felt compelled to give it another try. But rather than go through the library fracas, I opted to purchase the text. And not only that, but when I packed up all of my possessions for my most recent move, Tropic was the one book I left out, thinking I'd read it on my "spare" time.

And read I did.

Or, rather, I read until about page 80 — at which point the rest of my books were unpacked, and I decided to abandon the Mr. Miller altogether.

I realize this makes me a philistine. I realize my giving up on Henry is an indication of my waning affiliation with academia — perhaps even a symptom of intellectual decay.

But I can't help it. Miller's narrator is so unlikeable — his disregard for women so intense — that I don't care about the philosophy inherent in this blatant display of ex-patriot nihilism. I don't care that the spiritual and emotional decadence is somehow parallel to social collapse.

I wasn't at a good place in my life (when are we ever?) while reading it, and Cancer seemed to only make things worse. Along with other grotesque passages, expletives were too often used (by men) to describe females (and their sundry body parts), which served only to temporarily increase my own disgust for the opposite sex (stupid boys).

So I returned it to my shelf, and plucked Jonathon Franzen's How to Be Alone in its steed.

Not only does Franzen seem to be more appropriate for the times, but if there's one thing grad school taught me, it's that life is too short (and reading lists too long) to trudge through things that don't sustain your interest.

Still, I can't help but wonder if the simple act of closing the door on Henry Miller (for now, at least) means I'm undoing years of education. I wonder if it means I've knocked a couple of points off of my IQ.

But a part of me really doesn't care.

Next up: Why I Love Harry Potter.

"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental." ~Kurt Vonnegut

I can't think of too many people as chronically witty, intelligent and prolific as this man. Of those whose existence temporarily coincided with mine, that is.*


*See, Washington? David Letterman isn't the only good "thing" to come out of Indiana.

A Walk in the Woods (Book Review)Or, "An Open Invitation to Get Lost in the Woods with Me"

By page 15 of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, I couldn't wait to finish the text, if only so I could rush online, write and post a review, and then demand that someone here join me for a trek along the 2,000+ mile expanse of the Appalachian Trail.

By page 100, I was already plotting out my trip. Thinking of which supplies I'd need to purchase and what — if anything — I already owned. I was ready, honestly, to quit my job and move all of my stuff into storage (I needed to move anyway, right?), if only to sequester five months of time for the sole purpose of walking the trail in its entirety (though, as Bryson notes, you need to start early March to complete the hike before harsh weather intercedes).

But somewhere around the book's midsection, my excitement — which was, by this point, inextricably tied to the author's humorous insights — tapered considerably. I think it was somewhere in the Smoky Mountains that Bryson and his comical hiking comrade, Stephen Katz, were forced, by law, to bunk with strangers in filthy "shelters" along the trail.

And while I'd love to meet new people on such an adventure, when the stars come out, I'd prefer to be alone in my tent. So this was, for me, a considerable turn-off (I'd quote a passage from the book — which I marked with post-its — but the text is now on loan to my father). And it wasn't long after the Smokies that Bryson's hilarious anecdotes met a similar end.

I was still interested in the text, but I was also certainly less into it. And while humor was still present, it was scattered here and there, whereas before it had been omnipresent. I could sense, in a way, that Bryson was much more into planning the hike — that he preferred the idea or even the ideals of the hike more than the hike itself. In short: he lost his mountain man wanderlust about 200 miles in. And it shows.

And this — even though the witticisms did occasionally re-appear — was altogether disheartening. I felt like my excitement was being crushed along with the author's, which is in itself an indication of fine writing. Or else why would I have cared?

That is the beauty of Bryson's style: he's made a much enviable living out of traveling the world and writing humorous narratives to describe his adventures (if any of you know of a publisher willing to pay me to do the same — I'll take it). He even intersperses a bit of knowledge hither and thither: from the history of the Trail on up to its present condition, you could treat A Walk in the Woods not only as an informal travelogue... but also as a travel guide.

Or, to paraphrase the book in 15 words or less: it's funny; it's educational; it's a pleasure to read... but it also loses its fuel.

That being said, I still want to hike the Appalachian Trail: whether I do a significant portion later this summer... or the entire thing (unlikely — I don't have the cash flow) next year.

Anyone with camping, hiking and/or survival experience is welcome to join me.

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Book Review)

After it took me such a shamefully long time to make my way through my last literary sojourn, I decided I needed something short to get my reading glasses back into that proverbial saddle.

Something quick; and yet, something I've always wanted to read.

So I consulted my pathetically long MUST READ list. Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author screamed up at me from the page, having been a neglected member of said list for more than a decade.

This 1921 play is up there with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1952) in regards to scripts frequently cited as having changed the face of theatre. And though I promptly added it to my "list" after taking a Drama I class back in high school, I figured I'd be assigned it eventually, so I never stopped to read it on my own. And yet, no matter to which echelon of academia I climbed, no one ever assigned Six Characters. Instead, I read from Beckett's repertoire over and over (not that I mind — he's a personal favorite), whereas the Italian playwright was simply mentioned in passing.

And now that I've finished Six Characters, I can understand why teachers and professors alike prefer Beckett to Pirandello. And yet, even still, I regret that I didn't read Pirandello sooner. I don't find his absurdism (technically, I know, we can't call it that) to be as existentially poetic as is Beckett's, but the idea behind Six Characters is so... original... that I think any member of the Theatre of the Absurd would be hard-pressed to say they weren't influenced by it.

***

But that's not to say Six Characters is lacking in existentialism — or even absurdism, for that matter. Rather, the play centers both on the tragedy of man's existence, as well as the inability of an author to accurately capture the essence of living. This realization serves to exacerbate the characters' sense of futility and — ultimately — their anxiety.

Allow me to explain: Six Characters in Search of an Author is a brilliant example of meta-theatre, with the main players being wholly aware of their existence not as "people" or even "actors" — but as "characters" in a tragedy.

The play begins with these six characters interrupting a dress rehearsal for a yet another work by Pirandello. Several actors have convened for the rehearsal, and they're most confused when these six "characters" make a dramatic entrance, demanding that their story be told.

What ensues is a brilliant exchange between the characters, the actors who eventually concede to play them, and the director who wants to bowdlerize it all.

Point being, the characters bring with them a real tragedy that the actors cannot even begin to fathom. And the characters articulate concerns that their story can only be told by them, as no actor or director can interpret their experiences without distortion:

How can we understand each other... if in the words I speak, I put the sense and value of things as they are inside me, whereas the man who hears them inevitably receives them in the sense and with the value they have for him, and the sense and value of the world inside him? We think we understand each other but we never do. (20)

Not only is it impossible to truly feel the suffering of characters, played by actors, but even in daily human interactions, we can never wholly convey our feelings. Every attempt at doing so is hampered by the limitations of speech.

And you understand this further as the characters tell their story — as they act out bits and pieces of their true experience for the actors. Or as the Father later quips, they have "no reality outside of this illusion" (59).

He continues, to the director: "You should distrust your reality because, though you breathe it and touch it today, it is destined like that of yesterday to stand revealed to you tomorrow as an illusion" (61). Conversely, the characters are bound to a fate that recurs time and time again, reliving their heartache with the same veracity as the first time the scene was ever played.

Even more telling is the anxiety they feel whenever an actor or actress tries to recreate the scene after them, or the anxiety they feel when the setting cannot be exactly as it was, as when the Stepdaughter bursts into laughter while watching the "leading lady" play her role.

The Father aids her defense.

"It has such a strange effect..." he says to the director. "I admire your actors, sir, I really admire them... but assuredly... well, they're not us..." (51).

In both instances, the actors are forced to confront the futility inherent in their theatrics. That is to say, no matter how good the performance, the actors will never be able to truly capture the characters' experience.

Pirandello probably didn't know it at the time, but I'd wager he touched upon something that fuels our 21st century thirst for reality television. Why pay actors and actresses to act out scenes, when you can throw real people into a pit and see which one is eaten by the lions first?

He also alludes to one of the central dilemmas of stage acting, by way of the Stepdaughter, in that you can only show one scene at a time: "But to play [the entire scene] in the garden, as you want to, won't be possible.... because [the Son] stays shut up in his room" (58).

It is difficult, as the director articulates in his response, to show two places at once even though events — ones crucial to the final outcome — are occuring simultaneously throughout the home.

Once again, television (and cinema) are able to remedy this, in a way, though I think Pirandello would argue (and I agree) that nothing — even still — captures the experience of living.

In this and countless other regards, life is its own tragedy. And we all play a part that, try as we might, can never be recaptured. Not by artists, not by writers. Not even by photographers or memory.

And so, even as I mark Six Characters in Search of an Author from my MUST READ list, I'm adding another item elsewhere: see Six Characters performed on stage.

Bet it'll be nothing like I expect.

Quiet Desperation

So I have this 12-inch die-cut image of Walt Whitman at my desk, compliments of a friend.

A few days ago someone walked past and said "Hey, isn't that Walt Whitman?"

"Yeah, it is," I said, rather excited to have someone recognize him — thinking, too, that I might be able to chat about Leaves of Grass for a spell.

"Hey," they continued, "Did you hear anything a couple years ago about some developer wanting to build condos where his pond was?"

"His pond?" I asked, eyebrows raised. "What do you mean?"

"Wasn't that what he wrote about, living in Massachusetts? That pond where he stayed."

And at that precise point, dear readers, I nearly fainted.

Rings of Saturn (Book Review)

"Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years, quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life." ~W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn (1998)

---

This book is just under 300 pages — mere child's play back in my college days. Something that would've taken a week to read, or perhaps a single afternoon (if I timed my schedule just right).

And yet, it took me months — literally months — to finish this one.

And, no, that doesn't mean W.G. Sebald's Rings of Saturn is a bad book. Quite the contrary.

Rather, an unhealthy lack of free time — coupled with unyielding waves of existence-related anxiety — made Rings particularly difficult. I'd read 10-20 pages here and there, and then find myself with no relaxing time alone for a couple weeks, at which point I felt it was best to simply start over.

I believe I read the first 20 pages a dozen times before I joined a gym in my "new" neighborhood, where I could read whenever a stationary bike was available.

And yet, even still, four more months passed before I turned the final page — just yesterday afternoon.
***
The novel begins in a Norwich asylum, where the narrator (presumedly Sebald himself) was sent in 1992 to recover from a nervous breakdown. The cause of the breakdown isn't immediately certain, except to say that it followed a year of leisurely travel around the English countryside.

The pages that follow are a recollection of said travels. Or you might even say: the pages that follow implictly relay not so much the events but the sensations that precipated the narrator's collapse.

This is, as you've likely surmised, a rather peculiar piece that has the appearance of non-fiction (though it may, in part, be fiction). It's a travelogue that explores everything from the people that Sebald encounters, to all of the conversations, explorations and contemplations that result.

This is, for lack of a better expression, a beautifully sad book.

I was constantly amazed by Sebald's ability to blur the past with the present, describing century-old events as though he witnessed them first-hand. And all such accounts would begin when the narrator steps foot inside a new hotel or hostel: he meets the inhabitants and the staff and tells their stories — and the stories of their ancestors — as though they were his own.

There are stories about wars; executions; first loves... and last.

In fact, these aren't so much Sebald's memoirs as they are those of the people he ecounters.

In this regard the text was, at times, rather confusing. Other people's history becomes so inextricably interwoven with the author's that you often forget who's talking. The complete and total lack of quotation marks and paragraphing doesn't help matters, either.

And as annoying as I sometimes found that to be, this technique (an MLA nightmare) was not without purpose. It reveals, instead, a Walt Whitman-esque "oneness" with the universe.

But unlike Whitman, Sebald doesn't strive so much to sound a "barbaric yawp" as he does an existential whimper.

And so with poetic prose and beautiful descriptions that conjure all of the senses, you come to understand — clearly, and painfully — the author's bittersweet awareness of what he terms "traces of destruction, reaching far back into the past."
***
It is for this reason — and this reason alone — that I had I difficulty finishing Rings, even when time presented itself.

I was ultimately at the gym to work out, after all. But some passages in Rings were so... real... to me, I often had to choose between packing up and going home... or closing the book.

And though I regularly chose to shut the book, that's not to say the nausea, and all that it implied, quickly passed.

The Red Queen (Book Review)

After almost a year of intermittent reading, I finally finished Matt Ridley's The Red Queen.

I put it down every time something else came along, often abandoning it for weeks at a time. And then, when I'd pick it back up, I'd reread it in part to help jog my memory.

It's never taken me so long to complete any book — and certainly never so long for a book that's only 350 pages. And while I wouldn't say my laziness was a result of disinterest, the book isn't always a "real pageturner," either. I was, by this design, literally living the Red Queen life even as I tried to read the text.

If you're familiar with the Red Queen of Alice in Wonderland, you already have some insight as to how Ridley goes about describing the evolution of human nature: the Red Queen is always in hurry, but she never really gets anywhere (rather, as she moves forward, the scenery also moves, essentially keeping her in the same place she was at the beginning). If that doesn't make any sense, imagine instead the futility and frustration involved in running on a treadmill. Your feet keep moving, but you never actually go anywhere.

I hate to reduce this to a highfalutin version of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (which I've never read), but the connection warrants a reference: Ridley essentially sets about to explain why men and women interact as they do, exploring the evolution of homo sapiens from its hominid predecessors. I summarized the text in this haiku, and don't really know that I could add anything more to it, except to say that I did find the actual discussion of human evolution to be quite compelling. And I don't even mind all those passages where Ridley makes it clear that man is just a highly evolved ape with animal instincts.

What did bother me — and what made it so difficult for me to get beyond the first half — were repeated allusions to the mating habits of everything from fruit flies to peacocks. While I enjoyed each of these individual accounts simply because of my interest in natural biology, there were so many descriptions, that the end result was a bit of a mess. Not only were there several gaps between theories, but when there were connections, they often seemed forced. So rather than get a clear picture of where Ridley was going, I was trying to sort through a cacophony of divergent images, theories and explanations of habits pertaining to a hundred different species of bugs, fungi and mammals.

If the purpose of all that had been to later demonstrate how man is just another animal... well... there had to have been a better way to say it. And the second half of the book — where humans and apes are the primary focus — is what really got my interest.

Which isn't to say I liked what I read from page 200 onward. It was well-written and made sense, but I didn't like what I was hearing: a clear description and explanation of a variety of stereotypes that are probably true, though we wish they weren't. Why men are interested in youth and beauty; why women want men who make money. Why men are more likely to cheat on their wives. Etc.

It's enough to make a person want to not be in a relationship. Enough to make you despise mankind for scapegoating animal nature, all the while understanding — with a reasonable degree of empathy — the unyielding human conundrum.

The Pigeon (Book Review)

As with Patrick Suskind's The Pigeon, so it goes for much of human existence. Even those who don't shut out people block themselves off from something. If there's anything I can say in defense of the main character, Jonathan, it's that he was at least content for those 30 years. His may have been a false security, but most people never find even that.

But it's hard to not feel sorry for him, even before the pigeon... even as he's enjoying his quiet little existence; his wine and soup; the books on his handmade shelves. He's quite alone, and is terrified of anything that breaches from his routine. He's content so long as everything is the same.

Seems somehow crude to reduce The Pigeon's moral to a simple "Don't cry over spilt milk," insofar as I know from experience that some days are filled with little else. There's a puddle at both feet; a sticky spot on our otherwise clean shirt; and a crusty residue we can't seem to wipe from our lips. In short: everything is spilt milk. But it only takes a few drops to make a puddle. And a few puddles to fill a creek. And so on, until before you realize it one tiny, infinitismal thing serves as a scapegoat for all that has gone wrong in our life.

Jonathan doesn't have a bad day post-Pigeon sighting. He undergoes a much needed enlightenment. But it's hard to say, ultimately, what will come of it. Either way, Suskind's prose flows beautifully (I wish I could read the original German), and some of his descriptions are poetry. Two passages that stand out with me: Jonathan's visit with the seamstress, when her fingers touch the flesh of his thigh (likely his first human contact in years), and the sound of the rain falling on the hotel rooftop.

It did remind me an awful lot of Henry James' "Beast in the Jungle," which I've always thought highly of. A very different writing style (though nevertheless well-crafted) to a similar end.

White Teeth (Book Review)

The worst part about "White Teeth": the characters. While author Zadie Smith did a fair job molding each player into a firm, clearly indentifiable type, I had a hard time believing in the existence of any of them.

Five year old children speak like naive 23-year-olds. 15-year-old teenagers act like angry, self-righteous 23 year-olds. And grown men and women act like betrayed 23-year-olds who refuse to grow up (no coincidence that Smith was 23 when she wrote this).

The common element? The similarity between these otherwise well-defined stock characters? You can tell the same person is speaking through them, even as their independant actions define them (i.e. good character development... poor execution). To me, a great author shapes characters in such a way that you forget  there's simply one person supplying the dialogue. One person sitting behind the computer screen, or scribbling notes onto the napkins. I never felt this way with "White Teeth." I never truly escaped, but rather found myself being repeatedly pulled into an agenda.

I imagined myself back at grad school, hearing my contemporary British fiction professor attest to this book's merit. Analyzing it with Said in one hand; Sinclair's "White Man's Burden" in the other.

But what good is a review, without a point of comparison: "The English Patient." A brilliant, well-crafted book, save for one passage towards the end that nearly ruined it for me: an Indian man seeing himself through the white men's eyes, speaking not as the person we almost believe him to be... but instead as a mouthpiece for the author. We hear Michael Onddatje, not Kirpal Singh. Which isn't to say that there was no merit to Kirpal's anger (there was), but that for one weak moment in an otherwise amazing text, Ondaatje failed to let the characters actions speak for themselves. The scene was, in culinary speak, overdone.

And yet: I list "English Patient" among the best novels of recent time. I savored nearly every page of it. I underlined everything. Made notes in every margin.

I didn't do that with "White Teeth" — mainly because the copy was on loan to me from a friend. Partly because I had no 20 page papers to craft after-the-fact. And partly because "White Teeth" is no "English Patient."

Rather, the scene that bothered me in "Patient" keeps happening in "White Teeth." I could never catch my breath long enough to suspend disbelief.

At least... not at first. I started to actually get into the text about midway through (enough so, at least, that I was determined to finish). And the last 40 pages were even better: I was eager to see how the parties would come together (or kill each other) in the end. I didn't so much care about any of them (save maybe Archie and Irie), but I awaited an end to the plot in much the same way you might read a folktale, awaiting a summization of the story's moral.

I appreciated that, at the very least. I was hooked just enough to want to know the "endgame." I saw a few snippets of fine writing and deep insight. I marked pages in exactly six spots with post-it notes. I wanted to finish it. I'm glad I'm read it. And now: I'm most eager to move on to something else.

(Which compares to a long list of books I would've chucked aside after the first chapter, had it not been for the impending threat of class discussion.)

In short: there's potential with Zadie Smith. And, to be fair, my impression of the book was perhaps colored by a single plug on the front cover: "White Teeth just may be the first great novel of the century" —The San Francisco Chronicle.

This wretched line set an expectation the book was doomed to not live up to. If ever I publish, all I want on the book jacket is this: "Not a bad read" or maybe "Like to read in the bathroom? Take this with you!"

Now that's the sort of book that doesn't disappoint.