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osprey_archerMy dad and I went fishing this weekend, by which I mean that he fished and I sat beneath the covered bridge, dabbling my feet in the water and reading John Steinbeck’s The Short Reign of Pippin IV.
It’s quite funny - Steinbeck makes mincemeat of the French Communists, who abstain from voting on the restoration of the monarchy so they can complain about the king later. But it’s light-weight. Steinbeck explored similar political ideas in much greater depth in Grapes of Wrath (much as I disliked it), and with greater power and higher stakes in The Moon is Down; this books feels like a rehash.
Also, it treats rather extensively with Steinbeck’s interesting ideas about men and women. He’s much more enjoyable when he leaves all that aside, because then I don’t have to froth with rage.
***
My other foray into classic literature this summer was George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which I took to Italy with me on the grounds that if I had it I wouldn’t need to carry along any other books. And indeed, this turned out to be true, because Middlemarch is so long, so plodding and obsessed with minutiae, that it takes about a month to slog one’s way through.
Which is not to say I’m sorry that I read it. Eliot is in many ways an exasperating writer, but she does have a knack for creating memorable characters - in particular Mr. Casaubon, a cramped and petty man with a mildewed soul, too small to commit any actual evil, but possessed of a personality so arid that it sucks the vitality out of everyone around him.
Including the reader. I don't believe I've ever been so relieved by a character's death.
It also includes an interesting exploration of the ways that romantic love can diminish or bolster the character. Loving an unworthy object makes the worthier partner half of a whole that is smaller than they were alone. Both Dorothea and Lydgate eventually realize that their respective spouses are too weak or too venal to bear any weight in their relationship, and that they will therefore have to take the entire emotional burden of the marriage on their shoulders if it’s going to work. They do it, because it must be done, but it crushes them.
But romantic love can also enlarge the character - mutual love between good people creates a whole that is bigger than merely the sum of their two characters, because it includes not only their own good qualities but the strength that they draw from each other.
So I’m glad I’ve read Middlemarch. But I’m so, so happy that I’m no longer in the process of reading it.
It’s quite funny - Steinbeck makes mincemeat of the French Communists, who abstain from voting on the restoration of the monarchy so they can complain about the king later. But it’s light-weight. Steinbeck explored similar political ideas in much greater depth in Grapes of Wrath (much as I disliked it), and with greater power and higher stakes in The Moon is Down; this books feels like a rehash.
Also, it treats rather extensively with Steinbeck’s interesting ideas about men and women. He’s much more enjoyable when he leaves all that aside, because then I don’t have to froth with rage.
***
My other foray into classic literature this summer was George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which I took to Italy with me on the grounds that if I had it I wouldn’t need to carry along any other books. And indeed, this turned out to be true, because Middlemarch is so long, so plodding and obsessed with minutiae, that it takes about a month to slog one’s way through.
Which is not to say I’m sorry that I read it. Eliot is in many ways an exasperating writer, but she does have a knack for creating memorable characters - in particular Mr. Casaubon, a cramped and petty man with a mildewed soul, too small to commit any actual evil, but possessed of a personality so arid that it sucks the vitality out of everyone around him.
Including the reader. I don't believe I've ever been so relieved by a character's death.
It also includes an interesting exploration of the ways that romantic love can diminish or bolster the character. Loving an unworthy object makes the worthier partner half of a whole that is smaller than they were alone. Both Dorothea and Lydgate eventually realize that their respective spouses are too weak or too venal to bear any weight in their relationship, and that they will therefore have to take the entire emotional burden of the marriage on their shoulders if it’s going to work. They do it, because it must be done, but it crushes them.
But romantic love can also enlarge the character - mutual love between good people creates a whole that is bigger than merely the sum of their two characters, because it includes not only their own good qualities but the strength that they draw from each other.
So I’m glad I’ve read Middlemarch. But I’m so, so happy that I’m no longer in the process of reading it.
