Fences - August Wilson

Troy, a middle aged black man, struggles with the racial and social barriers or "fences" he feels have kept him back his whole life. He has reached maturity in an age unwilling to acknowledge his success. And yet Troy is unwilling to acknowledge the reality of the life of those around him. He treats his oldest son Lyons, who is in his thirties, like a child. Every pay day when Lyons comes around asking for money Troy makes a big deal but then on cue hands over the money...it's as if Troy's sense of satisfaction comes from being needed by everyone for their very survival. When his younger son, Gabriel, has won a scholarship to play baseball at a university, Troy refuses to allow him to be interviewed by the coaches. He belligerently forces his son to give up any idea of playing ball and instead forces him to take a grocery clerk position that will ensure him a steady but low paying salary.

Finally after slowly destroying the relationships he has with those around him, the play ends in a Death of a Salesman type way, with his friends and family eulogizing his life..only Troy wasn't riding on a smile and a shoeshine...

Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov

Our hero is introduced to us in the form of a congenitally lazy man named Oblomov. Our first glimpse finds Oblomov sprawled out on his couch, wrapped in a silk robe wondering whether or not he should get up...maybe he should just plan his day before he gets out of bed officially. It seems nothing could pull him from his torpor. Friends come to visit and blatantly steal his food, money and clothing and yet while he yawns and rubs the sleep out of his eyes, he seems reluctant to act.

Finally a friend persuades him to visit the country, where upon his arrival he is met with an enchanting dream of a young lady with enough faith in him to temporarily pull him from his slumber. He woos her with gusto at first and it seems like our character has been transformed by love!

And yet slowly making love become too laborious. Oblomov writes letters presumptively breaking off the relationship before he's forced to relinquish the right to sleep all day and become a member of society. He prefers rather to sit on the side line and have his business taken care of by others and slowly that is what happens. On the cusp of engagement, he lacks the momentum to summit and instead by his absence - the relationship ands and years later when he has still to leave his room he hears the news of his once lover from passing friends.

At first I thought Oblomov was a sorry excuse for a hero. Goncharov is poking fun at the Russian nobility, whose social and economic function was increasingly in question in mid-nineteenth century. And yet...by the end of the book one thin has become increasingly apparent: Oblomov has been clear from the beginning what his intentions and desires for his life were and while most would think these intentions lacking in depth...he fulfills his minimal life goals to the fullest while barely moving. His dearest friend, who happens to be type-A, constantly runs around cleaning up the messes he leaves and putting his life in order. So while this friend can be admired and exhorted for his ability to succeed in everything...at the end of the book he must learn to sit still...

An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser

An entitled young man, slowly over 850 pages makes the same mistakes over and over again seeking wealth and prestige, finally culminating in a murder. The last 300 pages are devoted to the trial and Clyde trying to persuade himself that he's really not actually guilty.

Constantly seeking the life of luxury, Clyde has been forced to cajole and enmesh himself into social sets that he hopes will provide him with the "American Dream" - living the life of luxury, with class and style and minimal work.

Clyde is an interesting protagonist. At first the reader has something akin to sympathy for this young boy forced to stand on the corner with his street preaching parents, suffering the shame and humiliation that comes with glorified pan handling. When he is able to get a job at a soda counter, it seems like his vapid life is filled with potential. But as he constantly seeks a life beyond his grasp he slowly becomes an avaricious young man trying to purchase joy and fulfillment. At on point his sister is in trouble and his family comes begging to him for help. He stands in front of his mother, his pockets filled with money he plans to spend on an outrageously expensive fur coat for his paramour and with disdain and disgust he tells his mother he's sorry but he can't help her.

After later seducing a young women, he uses her as long as it is convenient and then when a new social set seems willing to embrace him, he drops this young woman, now carrying his child, as if she were no more than a dirty rag. When she refuses to be left to face the shame of bringing a bastard into the world alone, he develops a complicated plot to drown her and make it seem like an accident. Clyde is anything but an intelligent planner and within hours of his crime everything has been found out and he sits in prison contemplating the futility of his life.

Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller

Recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize.

After 34 years on the road as a salesman, Willy Loman, broken and disillusioned by the futility of his dreams slowly realizes that the elusive "American Dream" will always be somewhere over another rainbow.

Rather than emulating a life of hard work and perseverance, Willy raises his sons to talk fast but only reluctantly to lift a finger in a hard days work. Always seeking the quickest road to success - both boys live at home, while the family scrapes by struggling to make ends meet.

After Willy realizes that Biff does not actually hate him for walking in on Willy during a liaison on the road - Willy elated, walks out of the house and kills himself.

"Nobody blames this man. You don't understand: Willy was a salesman, and for a salesman there is no rock bottom to life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And then you get a couple spots on your hat and you're finished. Nobody blames this man. A salesman is got to dream. It comes with the territory."

Lysistrata - Aristophanes

Originally performed in Athens around in 411 BC, this play is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end The Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace — a strategy that, consequently, inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual politics in a male-dominated society.

What I loved about this play was how both the men and women after a few days are driven completely insane by there desire for each other. How cute! If this strategy was attempted today I think the dialogue would go something like this - "Wait what? No sex until we can come to an agreement? Isn't that what we've already been doing? Who has time for sex these days...next idea?"

But for these Athenians, they are almost driven completely mad and the women are constantly trying to sneak past Lysistrata in order to have a tryst with a loved one. The ruses they use are pretty great. I think Aristophanes must have had a much greater respect for women then say...Chaucer? Lysistrata is able to defend her case to the men and negotiate a peace treaty.

I think what is notable about this play is that amidst a war that seemed endless and hopeless creative ideas were presented not so much as a solution but as a reprieve from the reality of life.

Kristin Lavransdatter - Sigrid Undset

This trilogy follows the life of Kristin Lavransdatter, a Norwegian woman living in the 14th century. Kristin grows up in Sil in Gudbrandsdalen, the daughter of a well-respected and affluent farmer. She is head strong and stubborn and slowly throughout her life solidifies her faith despite hardship and despair.

I had no idea what to expect when I began this trilogy. Undset won the Noble Prize in 1928 for this series, so as I grabbed a glass of port and wrapped myself in a woolen blanket I gave a toast to Sigrid and began.

Krisitn is truly one of the most stubborn heroines I've come across in literature, and yet unlike Undine Spragg the heroine of the Custom of the Country, there is a lot of divine retribution and justice. So much so that it is at times heartbreaking. While Undine ran around breaking hearts and buying dresses, Kristin's only vice is Erlend, who she gives her heart and soul to despite her family's wishes. She is faithful in her love for Erlend, risking everything for him and for a moment it seems like everything is going to work out. And then there are another 900 pages in which slowly things unravel and she is tried and tested and despite remaining true and faithful one is forced to wonder if her life serves as a metaphor on why we should listen to our parents.

I know very little about Medieval culture but this book makes me want to study and research this fascinating epoch in history. I want to sit at the large tables in the hall filled with food and watch the men and women paw through there food looking for the choicest morsels. I want to smell the fragrances of the straw and hay in the bedding mix with the beef stews while feeling the fire from the hearth on my back. I want to stand on a hill and survey the land while I ofter a prayer to the gods that my children will live and our harvest will be abundant.

The Fixer - Bernard Malamud

The Fixer is a 1966 novel by Bernard Malamud inspired by the true story of Menahem Mendel Beilis, an unjustly imprisoned Jew in Tsarist Russia. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1967.

A great contrast to Native Son,. While Bigger Thomas is completely unwilling to face responsibility for his actions and rather prefers to grumble about the lack of opportunity he has had, Yakov Bok lives in an environment of pogroms and fear for the minorities in a mercurial tsarist Russia. Bok's only real crime is living in an area designated for no Jews to live in. He is a hard worker, kind and compassionate and yet when a christian boy is killed, because he is a Jew, living in the vicinity of the crime he is accused of the murder. The majority of the book deals with Bok in prison, and while Bigger is eating steaks, Bok is eating maggots or being poisoned. While Bigger is reading one of the dozens of papers brought in for him to read, Bok is sneaking glances as the torn newspaper fragments he's given to use as toilet paper. There is no Justice. The system is unapologetic. Although there is no evidence against Bok, besides his nationality the prejudice is unrelenting. He is forced to suffer through strip searches multiple times a day simply for the added humiliation. The system is designed to humiliate. To destroy ones pride and humanity, and yet Bok emerges as a true hero, never willing to surrender his innocence or compromise his integrity.

Native Son - Richard Wright

I was somewhat surprised by this book after reading Black Boy. What I loved about Black Boy was the consistent theme that we are truly masters of our fate despite the circumstances that we come up against. In a world where either fighting the system or toadying to it seemed like the two only options, Wright discovered that through hard work and critical thinking there were often other options. What Native Son seems to suggest is that the system has created the person Bigger has become, in fact not only was he driven to his actions, but really they were the only options really available to him. He lives a seemingly virtueless life of aggressive hostility, where he fight oppression with more aggression. He seems remorseless for his actions which are brutal and inhumane and while he sits in prison eating his steaks and reading the paper he isn't sure whether or not he's even truly guilty. I found myself at the end of the book feeling unsympathetic to Bigger, unsympathetic to the idea that society was responsible for his creation and somewhat disappointed in general.

The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton

Our heroine emerges in the form of a bratty young woman whose seemingly only virtue is her beauty, with which she schemes and finagles 4 marriages with men, each one richer and more esteemed then the last. As she seeks her next financial victim she leaves a trail of heartache and death in her wake as her husbands each fall prey to her beauty and then helplessly watch as she throws them over for the next...

super sad...I kept waiting for the heroine to get some sort of divine retribution. I even found myself whispering under my breath "please Edith Wharton....just make a huge rock fall out of the sky and land on her...not killing her but leaving her horribly maimed and crippled and yet alive enough to live out her endless years in the anguish of being truly hideous...but nope. She got everything she wanted. Meanwhile husband #2 shot himself, husband #3 was forced to sell family heirlooms that had been in his family since the crusaders and her 9 year old son was left hopelessly alone while his mother ran off to try on new dresses and throw elaborate dinner parties...

Black Boy - Richard Wright

Amazing narrative of Wright's experience as a young black boy growing up in poverty during the turmoil of the civil rights movement of the south. Wright is a somewhat headstrong and independent boy in a dog-eat-dog environment, he has quickly discovered that no one is dependable or reliable.

Living is a somewhat abusive family it isn't white people that are antagonizing at first, but the social politics of his own family. Slowly as he grows up he realizes white people in general can be far more dangerous than he has suspected, and he must figure out how to live in deference to them while still pursuing his dreams to become a writer.

The black community has no expectations for him, the white communities expectations are only pejorative and the young communist party that he had so much hope for expects him to behave exactly like the Russian proletariat. After becoming disillusioned he decides to simply pursue his dreams.

Call it Sleep - Henry Roth

An infantile and effeminate young boy slowly grows up with an erratic, mercurial father and an over indulging mother. Unable to make friends when they move to the New World - or apparently even leave the house without a disaster taking place - he takes up a life of sloth and eaves dropping, which allows him to partially overhear his mother confess her darkest secret.

After being enrolled in religious school, where he finally begins to excel at something, his self destructive nature causes him to tell the rabbi that he is a bastard. As he slinks off home, the rabbi, who has made it there before him, tells his mother of his story telling, which causes an intense family crisis. The father becomes enraged, suspecting the boy to have been a bastard all along.

Finally the boy runs aways to the trolley tracks and in a confusing literary passage where the boys subconscious thought become interwoven as a second narrator, the boy is electrocuted, but manages to survive and is brought home with a semblance of reconciliation.

The Witches of Eastwick - John Updike

Three divorce's are imbued with powers enabling them to justify their petty argumentative actions in the name of witchcraft. A man moves into their sleepy hamlet, stirring up their interest and curiosity. The man is mysterious and the trio of witches becomes an enmeshed quartet. When a young couple of siblings is introduced to the group it is with some hesitancy on the part of the witches, who although persuaded out of good will resent change. The man marries thee young girl. The witches, overcome with jealousy curse her - causing her to quickly die a painful death with an aggressive bout of cancer. The man moves away with the brother and the witches spend a nano second in remorse before summoning a trio of husbands and fading into the happiness of solitude.

Wise Blood - Flannery O'Conner

In the novel, O'Connor revisits her recurring motif of a disaffected young person returning home and the theme of the struggle of the individual to understand faith on a purely individualistic basis. O'Connor's hero, Hazel Motes, sneers at communal and social experiences of Christianity, sees the followers of itinerant, Protestant preachers as fools, and sets out to deny Christ as violently as he can, he creates a counter-faith and try to draw the crowds as he proselytizes his new "Church Without Christ". Despite his refutation of faith, he is constantly identified as a preacher, even the way he dresses and the way he speaks draws a curious comparison from idle bystanders. Enoch Emery, a friend of Motes who is in search of a new Jesus, explains that some people have "wise blood": that the blood knows even if the mind does not. Hazel is obsessed with preachers, with salvation, and with denying redemption. He seeks to save people from salvation, eventually becoming an anti-priest of The Church Without Christ, where "the deaf don't hear, the blind don't see, the lame don't walk, the dumb don't talk, and the dead stay that way," and, in the end, becoming a hallowed ascetic, while around him presumed faith crumbles, hypocrisy abounds, and the fates of the meek is controlled by wild beasts.

The Violent Bear it Away - Flannery O'Conner

"From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom
of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away." Matthew 11:12

A young boy, Francis Tarwater, grows up alone with his uncle on a farm. His Uncle, a self professed prophet has kidnapped Tarwater from the boys other Uncle Rayber, the "school teacher", in order to teach the boy the Lord's work, which the prophet supplements from income he earns from his still. The prophet proselytises faith and God, but the school teacher in turn proselytizes secularism and rationality.

Tarwater struggles against God's calling, the power of passion and the dominance of destiny.

This was an amazing book. Flannery O'Conner is a gripping storyteller. Her book is almost visceral, something you have to scratch out from beneath your fingernails when you've finished. Her argument that destiny and religion will dominate over the secular is compelling and leaves the reader with a sense that we are mere powerless actors reading scripts written for us from the beginning of time.

Little Big - John Crowley

"Infundibular"

"A book that all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy." - Ursula Le Guin.
Hmmm...I kind of thought this book was a waste of time..I know Ursala liked it...but I guess I'm not really into fantasy fiction?
Basic Plot:
Smokey becomes enmeshed in a family notorious for poor communication. He becomes the solid, steadfast, integral part of the family even though perceived as a minor character.
After following the family for generations through the murky, hazy, ambiguous plot, the end ...or beginning (?) finally arrives and in a blink the new world is poured into Smokey's heart...where worlds exist within worlds and souls are forever hidden within storks...

Ironweed - William Kennedy

Set during the depression, Ironweed tells the story of Francis Phelan, an alcoholic vagrant originating from Albany, New York, who left his family after accidentally killing his infant son while he was inebriated. Frances throughout the book is pursued by the disapproving ghosts of his past, waiting for a chance to have a dialogue about what he has done.

"Bodies in alleys, bodies in gutters, bodies everywhere, were part of his eternal landscape; a physical litany of the dead"

Paying a life on penance for a drunken accident, Francis spends the rest of his restless life traveling, unmoored, unstable, with nothing but guilt to propel him forward.

The Floating Opera - John Barth

"Causation is never more than an inference; and any inference at some point involves the leap from what we see to what we can't see"

-Hume

I. Nothing has intrinsic value

II. The reason for which people attribute value to things are always ultimately irrational.

III.There is therefor no ultimate 'reason' for valuing anything.

On the morning of June 23, 1937 Todd Andrews, the best lawyer in Maryland decided to commit suicide. Todd was 37 years old, a bachelor, and a resident of the Dorset Hotel. Each morning he paid his rent for that day and then registered for another. It wasn't that his endocarditis or prostate glands made him doubtful that he would last through the days, instead it was his pleasure to do everything differently. After spending years trying to figure out the reason why his father gave up on his own life and trying to come to terms with the concept of suicide he decides the most plausible solution to his seemingly meaningless life is to follow suit and on a specific day at a specific time end his life as well.

The End of the Road - John Barth

"In a sense I am Jacob Horner..."

Jacob Horner, a shadow of a person moves to a new place to begin a new life at the behest of his shrink. He is vapid, directionless and empty. He follows orders rather well though and after the success of the experiment of a new place and slowly falling into the pattern of a routine, his shrink tells him to practice mythotherepy and assume a new role for himself.

He chooses the role of Mr. Morgan, inquisitor, ontological biologist and husband extraordinaire. After finding himself in an affair with Mrs. Morgan and demanded to continue unless he can theoretically support his reasons and intentions. Mrs. Morgan becomes pregnant and says she will kill herself rather than have the child, so Jacob frantically searches for a doctor that will perform an abortion.

For being unable to function or cope with the emptiness of his life, he now has a purpose and for a brief moment becomes alive with the prospect of a life in his hands other than his own. After convincing his shrink to perform the abortion, Mrs. Morgan dies while aspirating on her vomit. Jacob is once again an empty shell, ready to move on the next place manipulated by either the puppet master or fate.