Scrivner

Finished up with this one last Wednesday.  Don’t you hate that when you tote a book to work and are prepared to read it through the lunch hour and it turns out there are only four pages left to read because the rest is commentary?  So I spent the rest of the time picking pith from my orange.  Really, I must get a life.

Really good book, if somewhat simple.  I believe it was one of the first mainstream Western literature books done up in an Asian perspective/fiction.  I’m a big fan of that style of storytelling, so it was interesting to go a bit farther back than Lisa See or Amy Tan to get a handle on the evolution of this genre.

Circular story about Wang Lung, simple farmer who succeeds because he is honest and forthright.  Sometimes!  I thought the story, the story I wanted to know more about anyway, was about his wife, Olan.  Beginning scene Wang is on his way to get Olan, who he has never seen before, to be his wife.  After she comes back home with him things really start looking up because she is so industrious.  When they have to go south because of the floods, she keeps the family afloat because she knows how to beg and is not above stealing once in awhile.  Wang would rather starve than steal.

When they get back home again and again begin to prosper, Wang repays her by falling in love/lust with a lady from the tea house who later becomes his concubine.  Don’t worry, though, because he makes it up to Olan by buying her a wonderful coffin.

Oh, and then he is 65 and sleeping with the serving slave who is probably about 14.  Wang, Wang, Wang.

Story ends up with him close to death and his sons discussing how they’ll sell the land he has fought to hard to acquire and cherished like nothing else in the book.  Interesting ending, I thought.  Kind of leaving the circle a bit incomplete, but the reader can definitely see the parallel between Wang’s family and the House of Hwang, the rich folks who went through a downfall at the top of the book. 

Only sore points about this book:  I wanted to know more about Olan!!  She, to me, was more of what made this book tick and then she is exiting stage left halfway through.  Not fair!

And so it has come to this –

where everything is equal

the lights

the darks

the delicates

and those that are not so much. 

All seen is as one,

as covering and necessity,

not as separates.

What may have done for others,

in other definitions,

now must do for all

in any capacity. 

Someday,

they may return to their individual freedoms

and the choice of preference

may render those down-trodden,

unfashionable, or holey

into the back of the drawer once more. 

Until then,

they do

what

they are supposed

to do.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

I admit it.

I saw The New Yorker in his bio and thought,

jeezus pleasus

and other Latin phrases. 

It’s not like I didn’t want to get it

but

I don’t have my own swimming pool

so. 

And the old couple

that swim naked.  Gaa.

After a cold rain yet.

That’s just not a pretty sight. 

Probably symbolism. 

Or something. 

(hey, maybe this connects to that red wheelbarrow

and those chickens

somehow).

I don’t think I’ll ever get it through my head that Daylight Savings Time happens on Sundays, not Mondays.

Have I mentioned that I love short stories?  Short stories saved my sanity during the drudgery of the semester of British Fiction 330, Physics 101, Calculus 112, Chemistry 110, and Cell Biology 240.  Passed one, failed two, dropped one, and scraped by in one by the seat of my periodic table. 

Short stories are made even better when they are by an author new to me than I enjoy and given by a friend whose taste I admire (thank you B.!). 

What an interesting piece to begin a book of shorts with!  Having invented my own game in one of my first short stories, I really thought the game in “The Vision” called Mafia was brilliant.  The premise of the game is a 15 person village that contains 3 spy/mafia players that kill people with their eyes while the rest of the village sleeps.

Well, that’s not it exactly but as one of the main characters says, “It’s harder to explain than it is to play.”

I don’t know if I really understood what was going on here, exactly, because that Doe girl really got me confused about love themes and all that hokey-pokey-philosophical-jargon-enjoy-the-story-already stuff.   But that’s a good feeling.  I want to feel a little ‘off’ at the end of a story, or in the middle even…as long as it’s not in the beginning, for the most part.  That just makes me not want to read any further.  This story began with a great, little vignette about a childhood memory of playing kick ball and a kid who was legendary in those ways we’ve all known someone we’ve went to public school with to be.  A kid who lives just outside the box and, best of all, doesn’t mind or seem to care.  I thought the whole story was going to be about this incident of the kick ball game but again, surprised.

A whole story of pleasing surprises like getting up on your birthday and discovering it’s not only the weekend but also the daylight savings time so you get to sleep for an extra hour.  That would be surprising since DST always happens on Monday and my birthday is in February.

You just never know.

Now that I am finished I have only one question:  what does McCarthy have against motel rooms and their contents?

The room was filled with words.  Not books, words.  There were words to be tripped over and words to be sat upon as a chair, a ladder, a protrusion of significant magnitude.   (It’s funny how they always arranged themselves in hackneyed double entendres like an old whore trying to look younger by applying clownish amounts of rouge).   

She forced her way in and was assaulted by the ten dollar words first – ones that began with un and ended in ism.  They were followed by the flurry of rapidly rising adverbs which pelted her face like the frenzied beating of a crow’s wings.  And then there was the curious word prolix which wound itself around her feet and grew upward ending at the tip of her tongue. 

She got out the broom.

After I read The Road  by McCarthy, I was immediately entraced.  The Road is written in a Hemingway-esque sparsity that is simply stark and yet well, profound (I hate that word).  This book, on the other hand, still crazy-wicked style-wise but different, almost completely opposite.  Every detail is recorded including bathroom breaks.  I am about halfway through and really enjoying the ‘voice’ of Sheriff Bell who narrates at the beginning of every section.  Makes all the violence (and that’s the rest of the book) a little more palatable.  I am thinking that the movie, or the DVDin my case, is going to be full up of bloody scenes.  Looking at the still shots on Google, it seems so.

Anyway, am really enjoying this book so far and see no reason to not continue.  Would like to talk to Mr. McCarthy someday.  He seems like a real person.  Did he really go on Oprah?

Face it.  When everyone has one, it says something about freedom of choice.