War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Towards the end of September I read this post by Matt Yglesias about his experience reading Infinite Jest this summer. His conclusion?

But in a fundamental sense it struck me as very unsatisfying. Not just in terms of the weird ending, but in terms of definitely not feeling like I got more out of reading it than I could have gotten out of reading three books that were one third the length. That in turn is really making me glad that I was made to read Anna Karenina and Moby Dick in high school. I really loved both those giant honking books, but does it really make sense for a busy person in the modern world who maybe doesn’t care to dedicate all that much time to classic novels to read them? Seems like it might make more sense to read some short Tolstoy like “Family Happiness” and “Hadji Murat” and then move on to other things.

Adding new possible ways to entertain ourselves naturally starts to squeeze out the viability of some old ways. And maybe the long novel is among the squeezed. Which seems in some ways regrettable (which I take it is part of the point of Infinite Jest) but at the same time to really be a feature of the world.

There was a time when I might have disputed this. After all, what difference is it if you read three 300 page novels or one 900 page novel - if you enjoy the story, or the characters or the style or something about it? The problem, it seemed to me, was the 900 page novel that you don't enjoy in any discernable way. But mostly I felt sympathy for young Matt because at the moment that I read those paragraphs I was, after enjoying the first 1000 pages of War and Peace, only 200 pages from the end but wallowing and stuck just as surely as the French army was wallowing and stuck in the Russian mud and snow. I was afraid that my ability to read long novels was suffering the same destruction as the French army. And I kept wondering why (why?!) I was insisting on finishing the damn thing.

Other Things I've Been Reading

Over the last couple of months I've read a few books that I haven't blogged about.  It isn't that I didn't enjoy them; I just didn't have much to say about them. 

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

In Robert Altman's 2001 award winning film Gosford Park, Altman and screenwriter Julian Fellowes open the story with a surprise.  While the credits unfurl, the audience is following the progress of Lady Trentham's car to Gosford Park.  We watch the car arrive at the great house; we watch the family come out to greet Lady Trentham at the door; we watch them welcome her to their home for the weekend.  But we do not follow Lady Trentham in through the front door.  Instead, we watch the butler tell Lady Trentham's new servant, Mary, to follow the car around to the back and we unexpectedly enter the house through the servants' entrance with Mary.  Once through the door we see the underground bowels of the house: the great vaulted kitchen, the gun room, the wash rooms.  We see hordes of servants racing frantically around preparing for the big weekend, doing all the hard work necessary to keep the house running smoothly and efficiently. 

Sarah Waters’ latest novel, The Little Stranger, opens with a scene that reminded me of the beginning of Gosford Park.  The narrator of the story, Dr. Faraday, is recalling the first time he saw Hundreds Hall, an estate in Warwickshire.  It was "the summer after the war", he was ten years old and the owners of Hundreds Hall were hosting Empire Day festivities for the locals.  Although he remembers his hosts, Colonel and Mrs. Ayres and their little six year old daughter Susan, what Dr. Faraday remembers most about that day is the house itself. 

(Spoilers below the fold.)

Wherein I Admit to Being a Stargate Geek

In the fifth season of Stargate SG-1 there is an episode called "Ascension" in which Air Force Major Samantha Carter is told to take a little time off.  A workaholic, Carter protests that she wouldn't know what to do with herself at home.  But the General in charge of the Stargate facility doesn't relent.  

That evening, at home, Carter's doorbell rings and she answers it to find two of her team members on her doorstep.  One is her immediate superior, Air Force Colonel Jack O'Neill (played by "MacGyver" - Richard Dean Anderson).  The other is Teal'c.

Re-Reading A Whistling Woman

"And that," said Agatha to the assembled listeners, "is the end of the story."
There was an appalled silence.
Leo said, "The end?"
"The end," said Agatha.

AS Byatt's novel, A Whistling Woman, picks up where her novel Babel Tower left off. Frederica Potter, now in legal possession of her son Leo after a bitter divorce trial, is still renting a garden flat from government bureaucrat and single mother Agatha. As the novel opens Agatha is still (still!) spinning the fantasy tale begun in Babel Tower for Leo and her daughter Saskia . But the audience for her weekly story session has expanded to include the two children from across the street as well as Frederica, Frederica's new lover John Ottokar, John's twin brother and Frederica's brother-in-law.

The opening chapter of A Whistling Woman is the final chapter of Agatha's fantasy tale and the adults are as appalled as the children at the way the story abruptly ends. As Byatt says: All these people were both shocked and affronted by Agatha's brutal exercise of narrative power." But Agatha is adamant that it is the end of the story. "That is where I always meant it to end, " she said.

This is, perhaps, a foreshadowing of the end of A Whistling Woman, the fourth and, apparently, the last in the quartet of "Frederica" novels written by Byatt. And just as Leo complains to Agatha, "That isn't an end. We don't know everything," we the Byatt readers don't know everything at the end of A Whistling Woman. But maybe that's ok because, as Frederica remarks, "What's a real end? ... The end is always the most unreal bit ..."

A Year of Blank Pages to Fill

My first blog post was one year ago today, October 12, 2008. It doesn't seem like that much time could possibly have gone by, but it has.

I started this blog as an experiment just to see how it would go. I never intended that this would be a blog mostly about what I was reading but ... that was where things went.

At the beginning I assumed I would blog about things that I liked to think about and that interested me. But I found that a lot of what I spent time thinking about fell into categories that I had prohibited myself from blogging about: law and politics. I still think a lot about law but these days I spend much, much less time thinking about politics and I find myself resenting the time that I do spend thinking about it. So at least that part isn't a temptation anymore. The law part remains a problem.

TV Town

This week I was back to not watching much TV.  Thank goodness.

Castle.  Fun episode incorporating fashion week into the plot. No big developments.  At least none that I can remember.  But I was watching it with Truman so I was a little distracted.

Glee.   I love this show.  It is my current favorite show; I like it even more than Castle.  The mashup numbers the kids did this week were great. This show gets better and better every week.  I was explaining to a friend that all the adult characters are caricatures.  Which sounds weird and you would think that would be a problem. But not only does it not hinder the show, it helps it.   And I can't quite figure out why except that all the adults are adult versions of a highschool "type" whereas the actual high school kids are intended to have depth or at least be developing depth.  Maybe the adults are a lesson in what could happen to them if they don't branch out?    

Dollhouse. Goodness gracious.  On the whole I liked this episode and thought it was very cleverly written and directed by Tim Minear and David Solomon, respectively.   But Enver Gjokaj should be the star of this show.  I completely believe that he is whatever character he is supposed to be whenever a personality is imprinted on him.   And yet I always remember that he is Victor.  That is quite a feat.   I said when this show started that it was designed as a showcase for Eliza Dushku.  Instead it has turned out to be a showcase for Gjokaj.   I don't think this show is going to last and I hope he gets his own show when it is taken off the air.    Lots of fun things in this episode though.