Author: 459856pwpadmin

I have loved the idea of Twelfth Night since I was a small child living in Spain.  We have not always celebrated but my father did indulge me a little in this.  When I became an adult I decided to indulge myself. We have, when the calendar allows, had a party and Reyes Cake, but generally we have a quieter celebration and put out our shoes for the Wise Men along with offerings of sustenance for man and camel.  Later today the Christmas decorations will finally be taken down and the holiday will be officially over.

Of course part of the childhood thrill was the gifts that came from the wise men, but in truth I liked the idea of Christmas and gifts being slightly separated.  You would not know that now from the piles of wonderment that existed under our tree on Christmas morning.  In the days of my youth I would get big, ripe, Rio Grande Valley oranges, a real prize before fresh food was flown daily around the world and the miracle of UPS and FedEx could bring ripe citrus to any door.  Today I awoke to find that this had been left behind:

It is nice to know that my numerous hints did not go unheeded.

I have been curled up with my nose buried deep in its pages this morning.  It is bright and entertaining, a far cry from the dull gray skies that await outside.  I think that is the worst thing about winter here.  I don’t mind the snow.  I don’t mind the cold.  But I hate the dull somber grayness of it all.  Only three days of gray in a row now and I am ready to crawl back under the warm down comforter and hibernate.

Many of the photos are quite outré, but are also filled with inspiration.  This is definitely a biased sample of modern talent.  Still there are designers and ideas which I might never have encountered.  I will leave you with a brief collage:

I finished Never Let Me Go , perhaps not the best way to begin New Year’s Eve revelry, but a perfect ending to a year, a perfect setting to a new beginning.    The book, told in it’s placid way, is unsettling even from the beginning, before the reader even has a sense of why it is unsettling.  Vague references keep cropping up, the most mundane and ordinary things are described in such luminous detail so as to seem out of touch with this world.   The tensions, the vague sense of growing awareness, almost as if the readers are experiencing the same childhood mystery of the protagonists, the “knowing without knowing” that is described in the book, creeps into the reader’s psyche.  It is a book beautiful and terrifying, horrible and heartbreaking, filled with great humanity while at the same time reminding us what a fragile thing that humanity is.

The book is tender and touching: One becomes wrapped up the lives of these characters, the protagonists of this story, who are not really the protagonists at all.  This book is not about what it appears to be about. It professes to be about three friends, and on this level it is touching and poignant.  But truly this is a book about innuendo, about reading between the lines, about the little details of our lives and the things we don’t want to know  It is a book about life and what we take for granted, about what we accept and what we keep hidden; it is about the banalities of the small things and how we can be so wrapped up in our secure private worlds that we never see or contemplate the big picture.  Indeed this is a book caught up in small things.  Big issues are never addressed, and yet they are present.  It is also about the nature of humanity and the soul and the nature of evil and conscience.  The skill of this author is that he has written a novel of great beauty which is really an allegory for a bigger and more terrifying thing.  He leads us into thought without our really being aware of where we are going until it is too late to escape.

Although the characters in the book are clones, created to be used as organ donors for ordinary people, the book is not really about the dangers of science, or morality or religion.  It is a call to conscience however, a call to responsibility, a reminder that evil can creep in the most unassuming of ways.

Perhaps equally as disturbing, to me at least, as the idea that this novel is about a world in which clones “students” they are called, are raised in isolated rural schools apart from society, isolated in knowledge, limited in their interactions with others, is the idea that they accept their fate so unconditionally.   The protagonists are fully developed characters, as caring, warm, and human as any person we might meet, and yet they blindly and accept their fate like sheep or cattle, herded to their hospitals to make their “donations”.  It is sad and frightening that they so willingly accept their fate, and it is also profoundly disturbing that the society of caring humanity which they serve also accepts their fate so blindly, removing itself from any recognition of what is being done in its name.

Kathy’s question, near the end of the book “Why should we not have souls?” echoes through my mind.  It will continue to do so for quite some time.

With the holiday guests and general hoopla, much has been out of its normal routine around the Dooney household of late.  We are starting to get back into a normal schedule though.  The washing machine has resumed its labors and I have gotten back to the gym twice this week instead of my normal four-times weekly schedule.  There is still hope as the week is not yet over.

Mom brought a series of books with her, some of which have been properly dispensed with:

I read A CRY IN THE NIGHT by Mary Higgins Clark on the bicycle this week.  It was a fairly fast moving, shallow but entertaining read that was quickly forgotten. It took about an hour and a half of bicycle time- perfect for that category of books I call “bicycle books”, fast moving enough to keep one pedaling on the damned exercise equipment but not really requiring thought which might cause one to slow down.  Most of these books are not particularly well written,  they move quickly, there is little character development, and the plot and writing are heavily stereotyped and cliched.   Still they entertain me through a necessary evil.  Beautifully written fiction does not work as well, as I, at least, tend to stop pedaling during a particularly lovely passage, or when the story line requires me to put the book aside and contemplate something.  The exercise bicycle is the perfect vehicle for a whole class of popular fiction that can be entertaining but I find I would never really get through if I just sat down and tried to read them. 

I am also reading NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is an excellent novel, beautifully written, beautiful prose, great story line, good plot, character development and everything.  Ishiguro is one of the rare writers who writes beautifully and writes well and I love reading this novel.  It is very touching and poignant, while at the same time being somewhat unsettling and, as one gets further into it, darkly horrifying.  It is not always easy to read on the bicycle, which is why I switched to the popular trash mentioned above for the bicycle.

Also noteworthy in books is that I managed to pawn off SON OF A WITCH by Gregory Maguire to Miriam, who is interested in reading it as a fun entertainment.  She really enjoyed WICKED, as did my mom, but I am probably the only person in America who found it boring, tedious, and difficult to get through. 

Although I thought WICKED started off well, and I was looking forward to it, I felt the character development and the sense of the plot fell off as the book progressed and the later part of the book, involving the wizard and Dorothy and the whole “Wicked Witch” scenario, was never completely developed; it was rather rushed and pasted together, as if the author spent too much time on early childhood foundations and then found he had run out of time.  Despite Elphalba’s lengthy ruminations, her motivations were never adequately explained.  What started out as promising character development became rushed in the end.  Elphalba’s adult activities, how she conceived them, and why they went wrong were seriously glossed over.  What seemed to be a book aimed at breaking the stereotype of the wicked witch, ended up lapsing into even more stereotypes.  Generally I found the cynicism, satire, and wit entertaining but not fully developed, as if cleverness was enough..  I found this so frustrating that I kept abandoning the book, although I did eventually finish it.  It was certainly not the worst book I have ever read, but it was incredibly frustrating.

At any rate, I skimmed through SON OF A WITCH and it may be entertaining, but I am not convinced it will not fall prey to the same faults as its predecessor.  Better, in my mind, to pass it on.

Jeffrey Eugenides opens his novel, Middlesex, with great brio:   “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” He proceeds to give the reader an excellent novel combining modern genetic theory with epic narratives of Greek tragedy and comedy, combined into a never boring, insightful, often humorous view of mid 20th century middle America, gender issues, science, and human fallibility.

The plot is ambitious with outlandish twists that flirt dangerously close to that fine line between belief and disbelief.   As I mentioned the novel is serious and fun, and it combines opera and tragedy in epic proportions in a complex structure that never quite topples over.  This truly is a masterful novel and a wonderful story that does stay with the reader for a while, primarily for Eugenides great skill in rendering adolescent angst and confusion, reminding the reader of their own periods of uncertainty, and making Cal (Callie’s) story so moving and endearing.  Cal is completely believable and fully developed.  The plots and the central thesis are well maintained throughout despite a labyrinthine plot worthy of the Minotaur.  This novel is so much more than the story of a hermaphrodite finding his place in the world. It works on so many metaphorical levels, playing up the trauma of growing up from the innocense of childhood to face the almost deoncstructed nature of modern American society, and also echoing the confusion of first and second generation Americans trying to negotiate their way through and find their place in American culture.

An excellent, excellent novel