“It was tediousness made tangible . . .”
Carol Milford graduates from a small St. Paul college with idealistic notions of taking some backward prairie town and transforming it into a cultured utopia of the plains. When she marries small-town doctor Will Kennicott, she optimistically sees a chance to put her ideas into practice. After arriving in his hometown of Gopher Prairie, however, her ideas for reform fall on deaf ears, and she finds herself not the town’s savior, but rather its prisoner.
Having grown up in a small town in Wisconsin, and lived in larger cities, I can see both the pros and cons of small-town life. Sinclair Lewis’s portrait, however, is relentlessly one-sided and bleak. Gopher Prairie is so abysmal, and its denizens so unsympathetic, that it almost defies believability. Lewis doesn’t treat his protagonist any kinder, either. We are privy to Carrie’s every shallow thought, every flighty notion, every petty grievance, to the point where there’s not much left in her to root for.
The title of this review is a quote from the book that encapsulates much of its plot. Chapters and chapters go by detailing Carol’s dismal existence. I kept waiting and waiting for something—anything—to happen. Will she cheat on her husband? Will she run away? Will she kill herself? Finally around chapter 30 things start happening, but rather than satisfy me they just made me cringe. The book redeems itself a little in the last few chapters, adopting a more positive tone and injecting a dash of feminism, but it was a little too little and a little too late.
One thing’s for certain, Lewis is an incredible wordsmith. His prose is elegant and effortless, with a beautiful poetic quality about it even when he’s being sarcastic, ironic, or just plain depressing. With a simple turn of phrase he can describe a detailed scene or a complex human emotion that would take lesser authors whole pages to relate. I’m sure at the time it was written, this was a groundbreaking novel, and years ahead of its time in its feminism and liberalism. I admired this book more than I enjoyed it. I am looking forward to reading more of Lewis’s work, but I’ll probably never read Main Street again.
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This is the way to learn Chinese.
This series of textbooks by John DeFrancis is an excellent way to learn Chinese characters. I’ve looked around for other textbooks, but have never found another with such a structured, systematic approach. You learn ten characters in each lesson, and about 40 combinations (words and phrases) composed of those characters. Their usage is illustrated in sample sentences; then you are given dialogues and narratives to read. Every sixth lesson is a review lesson, in which you don’t learn any new characters or combinations. In Volume I and Volume II combined there are 48 lessons, for a total of 400 characters.
One of the great things about this system is that it doesn’t require a lot of memorization. You learn the characters from reading them in actual sentences and paragraphs. When you’re working on chapter 12, for example, the characters you learned in chapter 11 may be difficult to remember, but by the time you get to chapter 16 you’ve read them so many times that they are second nature to you.
As for the actual text, the book is intended for college students majoring in Chinese, so a lot of the stuff you’re reading relates to academia: attending classes, taking exams, teaching, reading and writing books. As you go on in the series and learn more characters, the topics get broader and you start to learn about Chinese culture, geography, politics, and everyday life. It can seem a little counterintuitive at times; before you know the words for colors or food items, you already know the words for 20 different academic disciplines. Since these books were published in the 1960s, some of the narratives are a little outdated. There’s a lot of talk about “I remember before the People’s Republic . . .” and “That old man was an official in the Qing Dynasty . . .” (if the book were written today, that old man would be dead), but you do learn a little about Chinese history and, more importantly, you do learn how to read and write Chinese characters.
This series concentrates mostly on the traditional characters. At the end of Beginning Chinese Reader Volume II there is an extended lesson on simplified (or modern) characters. So you spend about 90% of your time on traditional, and 10% on simplified. Because you spend less time reading the simplifed characters, they require more memorization. Between the two versions about two-thirds of the characters are the same, so you just have to learn the simplified equivalents of the other one-third.
One important thing to note is that in the back of Beginning Reader Volume II, besides the aforementioned lesson on modern characters, there is a glossary/index of all 400 characters and their combinations, plus charts listing the characters by lesson, by radical, and by number of strokes. There’s also some diagrams on stroke order (how to actually draw the characters). If you just buy Volume I you won’t have access to all that helpful material, yet it’s still possible to complete Volume I without it.
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Surprisingly devoid of espionage
The Spy is James Fenimore Cooper’s second novel. When published in 1821, it was an instant hit and became the first truly successful novel in American literature. In style, it greatly resembles the works of the eminent historical novelist Sir Walter Scott, whom Cooper idolized and strove to emulate.
The story takes place in 1778 in the midst of the American Revolution. While much of the nation at that time had been divided into pro-royal and pro-rebel districts, the county of Westchester, New York, was considered “neutral ground,” a territory contested by both sides, where tories and patriots often lived next door to each other. Mr. Wharton, a prominent estate holder in the county, attempts to maintain a prudent neutrality throughout the conflict. A widower, he resides on his estate, “The Locusts,” with his two daughters and his late wife’s sister. Sarah, the eldest daughter, favors the side of the Crown, while the younger daughter Frances is disposed toward the rebel cause. Frances’s patriotic inclination may be due in no small part to her love for Major Peyton Dunwoodie, a soldier in the Virginia Dragoons. Mr. Wharton also has a son, Henry, who serves as a Captain in the British Army. Despite fighting on opposite sides of the war, Henry Wharton and Dunwoodie are old school chums and maintain a close friendship. On a week of leave from His Majesty’s service, Henry dons a disguise in order to cross enemy lines to see his family. Though his intentions are honorable, this subterfuge may be interpreted as an act of espionage, and his seemingly harmless visit leads to a series of life-threatening events.
Though the Revolution makes for fascinating subject matter and offers the potential for some exciting drama, Cooper never takes full advantage of its possibilities. The action in the book takes a back seat to the characters’ love lives, and the plot is constantly diverted by tangential conversations which contribute little to the momentum of the story. The pace is frustratingly slow and meandering. Cooper’s greatest offense is that despite being entitled The Spy, his book contains little or no espionage. We are told that Harvey Birch, a traveling peddler and friend to the Whartons, is selling secrets to one side or the other, but no example of such a transaction is ever actually depicted. Periodically Birch shows up in disguise, offers a warning to one of the characters, then vanishes. This may make him a master of disguise and an escape artist, but it doesn’t make him a spy. The stealing or selling of state secrets plays no part in the plot. Unfortunately, instead of an espionage thriller or a war story, The Spy is primarily a romantic melodrama.
Nevertheless, despite the book’s disappointing elements, it does kind of grow on you. The last two chapters are quite satisfying and do much to redeem the book as a whole. Though the slow pacing makes for irksome reading, upon completion of the novel one looks back on the large ensemble cast of characters and the major plot events with some fondness. If a screenwriter were willing to expend some effort separating the wheat from the chaff, this book could be cut down into an enjoyable two hour movie. Though this novel is not on par with a great work like The Last of the Mohicans, readers who enjoy Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels or the works of Scott, and can tolerate the occasional periods of poetic digression and narrative lethargy one often finds in early 19th century literature, will find some merit in The Spy.
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Does exactly what the title promises
This is the first book I’ve read in the Introducing series, and for the most part I was pleased with it. For those not familiar with the series, the Introducing books provide concise “CliffsNotes”-type summaries of complex philosophical and scientific subjects, combined with comic art. Not so much graphic novels per se, the books feature one or two paragraphs of text per page along with a black and white illustration often superimposed with dialogue or thought balloons.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a fascinating character who captivated Europe by subverting the rationalist Enlightenment with the revolutionary idea that civilization was actually bad for humanity. This book offers an abbreviated biography of Rousseau, interspersed with summaries of his works. The majority of the text is devoted to in-depth discussions of the novel Émile and the political treatise The Social Contract. Dave Robinson does an admirable job of explaining Rousseau’s philosophical concepts clearly and concisely. This book is by no means a Rousseau lovefest; Robinson is quite critical of Rousseau’s ideas and if anything I wish he had been a little more complimentary, as it might give the reader a better idea of why exactly Rousseau was so admired and so influential. In this account Rousseau comes across a little like a kook who had no business being buried in the Pantheon. Nonetheless, the writing is lively and engaging, providing about two hours of entertaining and educational reading. I was less impressed by the art, which I felt was not particularly well executed and did little to enhance the text. I can appreciate how difficult it must be to find graphic representation for abstract philosophical ideas such as these, but since that is the whole purpose of existence for the Introducing series, I expected more from the graphics.
This book, of course, is by no means a substitute for reading the actual works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I approached this book with the intention of answering two fundamental questions: 1) Do I really want to read Rousseau? 2) If so, what work(s) do I want to read? Upon completion of this book, I feel those questions have been adequately answered.
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Socialism 101
War of the Classes is a collection of political writings by Jack London first published in 1905. London was a prominent socialist, and here he writes primarily about economic issues related to the struggle between labor and capital. At the time this book was compiled, socialism was gaining strength in America and abroad, massive strikes were causing frequent clashes between labor unions and the National Guard, and Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs had just garnered over 400,000 votes in the Presidential election. London uses the current events of his day to educate the reader in basic Marxist principles. What results is both an instructive text on socialist theory and a snapshot of the state of labor issues in the early 20th century.
Though London was noted for his zealous radicalism, here he mostly avoids fiery rhetoric and states his case clearly and rationally. He doesn’t get distracted with a lot of anecdotes, metaphors, or poetic rhetoric, but rather stays focused on the facts, at least the facts as seen through his admittedly biased red-colored glasses. At times the book gets a little bogged down with statistics, but overall, through his skillfully penned prose, London renders the complex subject matter intelligible and the text a pleasure to read.
The meat of the book consists of five long essays that were originally written as speeches. In “The Class Struggle,” London outlines the basic conflict between labor and capital, and depicts the two sides as opposing armies preparing for all-out war. In “The Tramp,” London discusses the “surplus labor army” and its necessity within a capitalist society. “The Scab” details the myriad ways by which individuals and parties in our capitalist society are forced to “scab” each other, that is, to provide more labor for less payoff. In “The Question of the Maximum” London addresses the problem of surplus capital and asks the question, “How much economic growth is too much?” In “Wanted: A New Theory of Development,” he makes the case that the rise of the common man is actually antithetical to the evolutionary law of survival of the fittest. Once the socialist revolution is accomplished, London asks, what will be the new law of development that insures the continued evolution of the species? Also included are three shorter essays, including the autobiographical “How I Became a Socialist,” but due to their brevity and shallower depth of discourse they’re less compelling than the five longer pieces.
Many of the labor issues of London’s time are still relevant today, and lessons learned from this book are still applicable. The difference between London’s day and ours is that he and millions of his comrades believed that a worldwide socialist revolution was imminent, whereas today, after the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the ongoing capitalization of China, socialism remains anything but a potent force in world politics. If nothing else, London’s quixotic political thought provides a healthy dose of romantic nostalgia for a lost utopian dream.
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A strange fiction/philosophy hybrid
Prior to the twentieth century, philosophy was the driving force behind all literature. Authors used the novel as a means to communicate their ideas on man’s purpose and his place in the universe. With Louis Lambert, however, Balzac takes the idea of the philosophical novel a little too far in giving us this odd, chimerical mashup of philosophical treatise and coming-of-age novel.
Louis Lambert is a boy of modest means, born in Vendôme. At a very young age he develops a passion for reading and soon begins to exhibit signs of a genius intelligence. He captures the attention of the writer Madame de Staël, who offers to finance his education at the Collège Vendôme, a boarding school run by the Catholic order of the Oratorians. There he develops a close friendship with the narrator of the novel, presumably Balzac himself. Lambert’s intellectual development is profoundly affected by the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish philosopher who proposed a dualistic philosophy in which man is composed of an animal body and an angelic spirit, a person’s nature being determined by the preponderance of one or the other of these independent influences. Eventually Lambert goes on to develop his own more materialistic version of Swedenborg’s philosophy, though it’s still a quite mystical, dualistic form of materialism. In Lambert’s view, the universe is created of one substance which resembles an electrical energy. Ideas are like living things inhabiting the internal world of the mind, which coalesce to form the Will, through which man is able to affect the external world. At about the age of 15, Lambert consolidates these ideas into an essay entitled The Treatise on the Will, much to the chagrin of his educators, who abruptly confiscate the manuscript.
Though Louis Lambert was published in 1832, Balzac displays an almost modernistic experimentation with form and style. The first quarter of the book is a straightforward narrative of Lambert’s youth and his time spent at the Collège, which is mostly based on Balzac’s own educational experiences. This is the most intelligible and enjoyable portion of the book. The second quarter of the book concentrates on the contents of the Treatise, mostly related through Lambert’s ecstatic, confusing disclosures to his friend. This is followed by three-eighths of the book comprised of love letters from Lambert to a woman he adored. While these epistles are eloquent and lyrical expressions of love, they do little to move the story forward or shed light on Lambert’s philosophical thought. The final eighth of the book consists of a couple laundry lists of philosophical postulates, arranged and enumerated with the intention of resembling the Euclidian order of Spinoza’s Ethics, but much more illogically constructed.
There is some validity to Balzac’s ideas on metaphysics and epistemology. This novel has value in that it does give the reader some insight into the philosophical thought of this great man of letters. The medium used to express that thought, however, is less than satisfying. Balzac could have conveyed these ideas far more successfully in a series of essays, or even a memoir of his own intellectual development. Instead, the book is too philosophical to be good literature, and too literary to be good philosophy. Failing on both counts, Louis Lambert is a book best skipped by all but the most enthusiastic of Balzac’s admirers.
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An underappreciated masterpiece
This lesser-known novel is one of Emile Zola’s greatest works. It has been translated into English under various titles, among them Pot Luck, Piping Hot!, and Restless House. It is the tenth book in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, though that’s not vitally important because they all stand alone as individual works of literature.
Pot-Bouille gives us a revealing window into the secret lives and discrete liaisons of the inhabitants of a middle-class apartment building in Paris during France’s Second Empire. Within that “middle class” there are many levels of status, and each character in the book attempts to find some way of clawing and scratching his or her way up to a higher step on the societal pyramid. Among the ensemble cast of characters is Octave Mouret, son of Francois Mouret and Marthe Rougon from Zola’s earlier work The Conquest of Plassans. Upon moving into the building, Octave soon begins seeking an affair with an older, wealthier woman who will provide him with a foot-in-the-door of Parisian society. Elsewhere in the building, a mother pimps her daughters at dinner parties, trying to secure a match that will improve the family’s bleak financial future. Meanwhile, siblings of a well-to-do family squabble over the leavings of their dead father. Men squander their wealth on mistresses. Illicit affairs take place from the basement to the attic, all covered by a veneer of respectability. Away from the street-side facade of righteousness, however, the servants in the courtyard know the real goings-on and offer commentary like a sort of Greek chorus.
This is what Zola does best. He creates a setting, populates it with a cast of diverse characters, engages them in an intricate series of events, and puts the reader right in the middle of it. This book is a real treat for any reader of classic literature, even if you’re not familiar with Zola or the Rougon-Macquart series. Fans of Zola’s other works will find it on a par with his great masterpieces Germinal and La Terre.
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