Jeroen's Repository

Thoughts on McEwan's "The Comfort of Strangers"

The Comfort of Strangers is McEwan's sophomore novel (or novella if you prefer) and it shows; in positive and negative ways. This isn't a proper review, but rather a few observations on this story and the writing of McEwan.

When I wrote about On Chesil Beach a couple of months I mentioned the "two wonderfully crafted characters and the peculiar realtionship that they engage in" as one of its premiere qualities. There's no doubt in my mind that McEwan is a master in describing relationships between people. He manages to maintain their identity, but also how the relationship can confine their identity.

In The Comfort of Strangers the relationship between Mary and Colin is perhaps not as exquisite as in On Chesil Beach, but is once again interesting and engaging. To me it is clear that The Comfort of Strangers is very noticeably an early work of the author. Some of the writing is heavy-handed. Some of the foreshadowing is clumsy and the counterparts of Mary and Colin, Robert and Caroline, are at times grotesque but also somewhat flat. It's an uneven work but it does show glimpses of the brilliance that is yet to come.
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On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan

"They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy."

McEwan shows a lot of constraint in On Chesil Beach. He lays out his subject matter rather plainly in the opening line of the novel, and then moves deliberately towards the inevitable conclusion. McEwan intersperses scenes of the wedding night with flashback that explain these two wonderfully crafted characters and the peculiar realtionship that they engage in. And why. While sex and sexuality are obviously important in the novel, don't expexct anything gratuitous. More than sex this story is about, in the immortal words of Axl Rose, "failure to communicate". Not only are they not truthful to each other, but they are also unable to be true to themselves.

Thematically McEwan isn't breaking any new ground, but his rigor and pacing are a sight to be admired. This isn't an epic story, but it is exquisite in its execution.

Rating: 81/100

Hary Potter and the Presumptuous Pundits

An excellent point found in Dan Kois's contribution to Slate's Book Club on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

[Y]ou worry that those who judge the book as children's literature give short shrift to Rowling's work. I disagree with you a bit; I'm judging Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as children's literature, but in doing so, I'm putting it up against some of the greatest stories I've ever read, stories that inspired, educated, and exhilarated me as a boy and as an adult.

I couldn't agree more. While I'm all for literary analysis and criticism, shouldn't we judge a work of  children's literature as such? Especially in this phase of the book's lifespan, let's enjoy it for what it's meant to be first.

Sigh...

There will always be people spoiling things for the rest of the world. Like photographing every page of  the latest Harry Potter book before it hits the stores and putting it on BitTorrent. Oh sure it won't really hurt sales, but for millions of fans these Harry Potter releases are a bit of magic. It's all about the surprises in these books and spoiling that is just a bit childish. Luckily I've been able to restrain myself and will only find out all that good stuff tomorrow morning. Or so I hope...

Reading: Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

There's a peculiar pleasure in re-reading classics you know and love.  In a good novel your familiarity with the material doesn't impair your enjoyment of the work, but rather opens up new approaches for interpretation and appreciation. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, is a literary puzzle that only gives away its closely guarded secrets to those that read it again and again.

What makes Lolita so special is that it continues to amaze that such an elegant and stylized novel could be written about such gruesome subject matter. I hesitate to describe what the novel is  "about" as it is open to so many different interpretations. But this story, framed as a memoir written by the imprisoned main character, about Humbert Humbert's unhealthy obsession and 'relationship' with his stepdaughter, is an exercise in stylistic excellence. Especially considering that Russian is Nabokov's native language, not English. In an obituary, published in the NY Times after Nabokov's death in 1977, Alden Whitman writes:

"Lolita," like most Nabokov stories, can be read on several levels: as a narrative, as an exercise in logodaedaly, as a search for meaning and truth, as a tantalizing flight of imagination, as an exploration of a dreamlike confusion of time and place, and as an elaborative spoof. "He is not the kind of novelist whom you sit down to with a Scotch or an apple," Anthony Burgess, the British critic, declared.

While I agree with Whitman's assessment of Lolita as an intricate multi layered achievement, I have to disagree with Burgess. While appreciation of the novel's complex symbolism and deeper meanings make it a unique experience, reading the book never feels like work. Throughout it remains intimately readable, a feat that a work like Ulysses, for example, doesn't achieve. It is filled to the brim with so many references and literary inventions that it never ceases to amaze and delight. But even if you miss 70%  of those references it is still a worthwhile read.

Rating: 95/100

Reason, it all makes sense now

I'm halfway through Al Gore's new book The Assault on Reason. Or rather, I'm listening to Al's new book on my iPod (makes the daily train trip that much more interesting). So far it has been really good. Gore doesn't really break any new ground here, but he does piece together the various elements that undermine the American democratic process (Hint: TV). His ideas may not be new, but like An Inconvenient Truth it excels in proper, elegant, and reasoned presentation. Composition is something that is taught in every good academic curriculum, but few do it as well as the former next president of the United States of America. The book convincingly argues why American democracy is in such a decrepit state as it currently is. More notes and thoughts to follow.

[Read an excerpt on time.com]

Hunting for Pamuk

Unlike last year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, I haven't read anything by Orhan Pamuk yet. Of course I hit the bookstores after work, but the titles I was looking for, Snow and My Name is Red, were all sold out. Such a prize will naturally lead to quite a boost in sales and expose his work to an entirely new audience. If they can find it in the stores, that is. I imagine that Pamuk's publisher is working feverishly to get as many books to stores as quickly as possible. Two weeks form now a lot of people will have forgotten who won the Nobe Prize this year and, as a result, not buy the book. Of course I hopped online and ordered it, but this weekend I will be immersed in Resident Evil 4 rather than Pamuk's Istanbul.

Reading in Progress: Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

Went for a bit of window shopping this afternoon, and I picked up Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (quite a bargain at €5.99). I'm 20 pages in it, and it is good so fo far. There's also a film version that looks interesting (trailer). I'll probably do a review when I finish it.

Anticipating Feist's "Flight of the Nighthawks"

You might know I'm a pretty big fan of fantasy author Raymond E. Feist. To date,  I've read all of his books and enjoyed most of them. I'm eagerly anticipating Flight of the Nighthawks, the first installment of his new "Darkwar Saga". His previous series, Conclave of Shadows, was really nice but I had the feeling this trilogy spent a lot of time setting up the events for the Darkwar Saga. I think there'll be a lot of exciting events in there. What really got me excited is the excerpt that the publisher of Flight of the Nighthawks put up on their site. It won't really mean anything if you haven't read the previous series, but if you have...Wow!

New York Times review of the new Potter (spoilers!)

Link: Harry Potter Works His Magic Again in a Far Darker Tale - New York Times.