Lolita Revisited (spoilers)

Whilst reading the first portion of this book, I felt that it was important (because it was important to the author) to read Lolita again.  If any of you have read my initial response to this book  there is no doubt what my initial feelings where.  But after reading Nafisi's thoughts on the book, and also learning about unreliable narratives from my course How To Read A Novel, I saw that maybe my initial response was biased by my own personal experiences and feelings and that maybe I had missed something.  So I did it... again.

This time, to make it easier, I decided to listen to the audio book narrated by Jeremy Irons (who was also Humbert Humbert in the movie) and he was a perfect choice (for the narration...I'll never see the movie so I can't say how he was in that).  

It was just as disagreeable for me to listen to as to read, maybe more so because having the story read to you by someone you can picture in your mind, and someone who can act who adds emotion, depth and dimension to the role making the novel almost graphic.  Despite all that I tried to listen to it objectively, I wanted to try and see what Nafisi saw, and perhaps something more.   

So what I am going to do now is something I usually avoid... I am going to get into specific details, dig a little deeper than before to see beyond my original perceptions of this book.  

I have to admit, I didn't see too far beyond what I already saw the first time, but before I talk about that I want to say that this time around I was more aware of Humbert Humbert and his perfect understanding of how much of a monster he really was.     

In a nutshell Lolita is about desire, the unhealthy desire if an older man for a tween aged girl, and the lengths he went to, to get this girl.  He moved into her house as a border, married her mother so that he could stay there (and gain access to his Lolita).  The mother discovers, his predilection, but dies before she can do anything about it, so now Lolita is Humbert's for his own pleasure.

Here are some specifics.  I stated in my first blog that I thought that all of these characters (husband, mother and daughter) were awful, selfish and spiteful and I still believe that.  If the mother had not felt threatened by her own daughter's growing sexuality, if she hadn't tried to get rid of her so she could enjoy Humbert for herself, if she hadn't been so selfish, if she had thought more about her daughter's welfare rather than her own needs, things would have been very different.    

 Lolita was a very spiteful and selfish young girl and I still believe that to be the case especially after she initiated sex with her step-father.

While I do agree with Nafisi that Humbert raped her, and continued to use her for his own selfish needs, there was something very wrong with Lolita as well.  She seduced her mother's new husband!  How did she think life would be like after that?  Did she think she could go home from camp and play Happy Family with Mom and her new Daddy-O?  It's pretty clear in the book, she didn't know her mother was dead when she had sex with Humbert, so what was she thinking?  Obviously (hopefully), she wasn't, and Humbert, as the predator he is, just couldn't resist his obsession.

Sadly, for Lolita, it was what I would call some very severe consequences for that particular action and she paid for it for the next two years of her life (basically being kept as Humbert's little sex slave), though I think she remained complicit because of his manipulations and her own fears of having no where to go.  

So I have concluded, after doing this re-read, that my own personal perception of this novel hasn't changed a jot, but I do have a deeper understanding of the characters involved.  I think that when I also re-read the section in the book Reading Lolita in Tehran concerning Lolita, I will have a better understanding of Nafisi as well.  One last thought... this book was written from Humbert's honest, twisted, manipulative, and highly nauseating point of view, could you imagine what it would have been like from Lolitas?

Leaf Storm

I have this past week begun an online course called Reading Macondo.  Since I listened to One Hundred Years of Solitude last year I have been meaning to read the book (I went out the very week I finished the audio book and found myself a lovely used copy).  I have been hoarding it since then as I often do with literary treats.  The time has come to indulge and this course that I am taking (hosted by the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Columbia), is so much more than I could have expected.
There are five stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that we are studying starting with  Leaf Storm.  

I have pre-read all of the stories listed for the course (except for One Hundred Years of Solitude  which it has been suggested to read alongside the study of the other books), so I have a brief familiarity with the course material.  I did as suggested first time around and read for pleasure rather than study.  Pausing as I have this past week to analyse Leaf Storm has been an incredible pleasure for me as I have delved into the story in more depth.

As I am also half way through my other course How To Read a Novel, I have more tools at my disposal for the study of this first novella of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as we have covered plot and character so far, which has already been very useful to me.  Reading the stories casually I could sense the ability of the author, and be affected by the way he wove words to describe his universe.  Studying in depth just proved that he was a genius, the way he played with words to create a mood which even an interpretation into English didn't dilute.

...and just think!  There are five more weeks to go of this amazing course.

Remembrance Of Earth's Past

Another Hugo Award winner, this first book The Three-Body Problem was exciting, so exciting that I had to read the following two books.  I listened to the audio versions of the first two, and read the last one as an e-book earlier this year.  Either medium was excellent, I enjoyed each book thoroughly.  This is a trilogy that is truly epic in its telling throughout all three books (something I did not expect since the middle book is what I have typically considered to be just filler... a place saver until you get to the end of the series when it gets all exciting again.  But The Dark Forest kicked butt all on it's own and was more exciting than the first book in its own unique way.  I actually wondered what more Cixin could say after I finished The Dark Forest, it had all seemed pretty well sewn up by the end.  Oh boy was I surprised, jubilant even, while reading the third book  Death's End.  I was cheering at one point, oohing and ahhing at another point, while still being pretty clueless as to how it would all play out in the end.   Reading these books was like bouncing on a trampoline... I never stayed still.  There was a various array of feelings running through me from one segment to the next (though it was never exhausting as emotional upheavals can be, it was always gentle).

I have raved enough about The Three-Body Problem that my husband went out and bought a copy of the first two books. I plan on reading them when we have the complete set as I figure that there is much that I would have missed listening to the audio book.  I think it says a lot about a book, especially hard/military science fiction genre books like these, that I would want to return to the story again.

This is science fiction with what I consider to be the traditional story telling style of the Chinese saga.  There are so many components to the books it reminded me of Romance of the Three kingdoms and had such a classic way of relating events that had me also thinking of Journey To the West.  These fractions of stories all wove together to make an incredible and inevitable result (which Cixin has very carefully helped you to understand that there could not be any other way to conclude his story).  It's clever and original and not what I have come to expect from a regular "Earth is being invaded by hostile aliens and this is how we fought them" type of story.  Death's End is nominated for the Hugo this year, I wish Cixin Liu the best of luck.

Ulysses

I place Ulysses by James Joyce in the category of really hard books to read so I have some tips on how you can read it.
I stopped and started this book a lot until I understood that there were no quotation marks and just a hyphen to mark when a speech begins.  But even that breakthrough didn't help a lot with the reading of my book.  So I decided to try listening to it instead.  My first attempt did not go very well, and I found that I needed to read along with the recording because some things weren't very clear.  That is when I put it aside for a while.  It was not until I found what I think is the perfect recording of Ulysses that I gave it another go and I will tell you why this version was of so much use to me... it was a full cast of Irish actors who did the job!  With different voices helping to differentiate lines and a copy of the book as well, I was able to successfully read and understand James Joyce's Ulysses! 

Once my technical issues were dealt away with I was able to focus on what the book was about.
In a nutshell, it is basically an account of Leopold Bloom as he lives through a twenty four hour period in Dublin.  Stephen Dedalus who I am already familiar with from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is a secondary character (but more prominent than the rest).

What is also to be understood about Ulysses is that it is meant to be an odyssey of the mind (many passages being the stream-of-consciousness of not only Dedalus and Bloom but other lesser characters).  Listening and reading at the same time really helped to keep track of these switches from dialogue to what I can only describe as musings.  The episodes are named after characters from Homer's Odyssey (though the content of each section is only vaguely parallel to each other).   It was fun to spot the connections!  What I wasn't too keen on is the idea that Stephen was meant to be Telemachus and Bloom was Odysseus (ugh!).  While fascinated with these connections and what Joyce did with these characters I am still the purist when it comes to the Odyssey and I didn't like either Dedalus or Bloom at all to be connected with some of my favourites.
However, it was an odyssey-like experience reading this book, and I can safely say that I will attempt it again at a later date to see what else I can see (or what I had missed) in a second reading.  Listening and reading felt a lot like binge-watching a show, I was exhausted after each episode. It wasn't an easy, comfortable read, but I am glad I made the attempt.

Tips

There are books that are very difficult to read.  Being as obsessed as I am with "reading it all", and wanting to tackle all of the books listed on my Great First Lines of Literature coffee mug, I had to read this book, no matter how hard it is to read.  Not because it was just on my mug but because Thomas Pynchon is listed in a few of my reference books and Gravity's Rainbow happens to be the most often mentioned books of his to be read...

I tell you now... it was a doozy.  That is where the title of my blog entry comes in today.  I have tips for die-hard readers who want to tackle this particular book (which was a really hard slog).  

First, I found it hard to begin (even with it's Great First Line!), and I had to backtrack a few times before I could get into the rhythm of it.  I had the ebook to start, but felt that it was too hard to move around in (going backwards and forwards as I did), I considered buying a hard copy (but after some progress through both the ebook and the audio, I found my disgust for the subjects in the book made me very reluctant to hold such a book in my hand!  I knew for certain that I would never wish to revisit this novel ever!).  So the audio book was my primary route through this book with the ebook on hand for some clarifications on certain names etc.,

Essentially, I think that Gravity's Rainbow is all about what men may like to do with their penises (and I'm not saying that all men would want to do this!).  I could look beyond the various sexual encounters in this book, and the sex-free portions to try and find the underlying meaning of what it is all about, but to me it read like something I remember learning in college at one of my psychology courses and it bored me to tears then (what else could the rockets be about but the many ways of "lifting off"?).  I truly do not care about complexes, ids, egos or the bodily fluids of humans and what they might want to do with them.  It is not essential to my understanding of the world to know or care about such things.  I should state that while I was disgusted about a lot of what I read, I am not standing in judgement of what two consenting adults may like to do to each other, honestly it is none of my business! 

So, on to the tips.  I strongly recommend that you not drink or eat while reading this book or even have much food in your stomach (this really helped me a great deal).   I was nauseous a time or two before I decided to cut out the food and drink.  I also recommend that you give yourself some time after reading each installment to soothe or cleanse your mind of what you read (it can be very disturbing).  Music is great, a fluffy, comfort read is good ( I would visit some of my favourite fan fiction sites), poetry can be helpful... I mixed it up because I didn't want to associate any of my favourite things too much with what I was reading.  

You should know... I don't think that there really was any point to this book.  No real purpose other than my statement on what I think it was about (penises). Or maybe all of the gross stuff just distracted me from what Pynchon was trying to say... I'm not interested in re-reading this book to find out!  

Good luck!

Opening My Mind

Two years ago, before going to Australia, I bought myself a Samsung tablet.  I had put a great deal of thought into what I wanted to buy, what size it ought to be and also what uses I would need it for.  The initial plan was to use it for communication as the cell phone DH bought last time we were in Aus. would have become obsolete, plus I wasn't willing to pay for another.  So a tablet was my choice.  I found it to be an extremely useful gadget (and it became my primary computer when my laptop blew its motherboard shortly after).  Not only could I email and text my family, but I could also do my banking, read books on my Kindle app and listen to music.

Every time I hopped on a bus in Canberra, I could plug in and listen to music.  I spent a lot of time riding and listening... it was pure bliss!

As a travelling device, my tablet was perfect (especially on my way to and from Australia on a non-stop fifteen hour flight, which was mostly in the dark).

I  am trying to stop being a consumer, so the tablet seemed like a very handy "Swiss Pocketknife" with all its different apps that enabled me to do more than I expected.  It also meant I wouldn't have to buy a Kindle.  While I think electronic books are a "neat" thing, it is anathema to me to have just one device for one purpose.   Kudos to Amazon for thinking that one through and providing an app.  I have bought many ebooks from them because of it.  Including many of these:-

                                                 

 Naturally it took me a while to get to that point (reading an ebook), but when I finally got there, I haven't looked back.  I like having access to books in any form, and I truly love the fact that I carry around with me several hundred books in my purse.
It was only this year that I found yet another neat use for my tablet.  As usual it takes a while for me to come around to a new idea, and this time it was audio books.
I read up to three hundred books a year, which doesn't leave a lot of time for other things that I also like to do.  At one time I used to churn out a dozen quilts a year, knit and crochet etc., but now that my hands are often holding books there just isn't the time.  I don't often watch television (which is when I used to get a lot of stitching done), but books have by far drowned out most other interests.  On average I make one, maybe two, quilts a year now.  I prefer to piece my quilts by hand... there was lots of applique and English paper piecing once upon a time.
One of my goals for this past school year is to read past and present winners and honors of the Newbery Award.  I have been hard on the scent, tracking these books down from various sources. From the BCLibraries Cooperative Library2go there was only an audio file available of the particular book I was tracking down.  So I had no choice.  I had to check it out. I hadn't really thought it through, but finally there I was sitting and listening to a book and it struck me that I really shouldn't have idle hands so I grabbed what I was working on (a set for a new baby) and a new era in my life was born!  I can both create with my hands and listen to a book at the same time!  These are my first results:-

Thank goodness for opening my mind to new possibilities!