Critical Response Archive: Pale Fire

Structurally, Pale Fire is a rather unique novel, masquerading as a non-fictional text surrounding an original poem. Posing as another kind of written work isn’t so unusual in the postmodern canon, but Vladimir Nabokov was one of the first, making Pale Fire an original and unique masterpiece. And because the novel is written as if it were nonfiction, the truthfulness of the narrator, who we know is merely a character, is already called into question. It draws attention to the fact that it is fiction, with made up place-names like Zembla and famous poets like John Shade. Whether the places and characters are modeled after anything or anyone in real life is anyone’s guess, and theories abound.

But what is most striking about Pale Fire is the unreliability and unlikeability of the narrator, who is so deluded as to think he could get a poet he admired to write a poem about him. And as one reads on, she questions the motivations and identity of the narrator, whose façade as a humble Zemblan professor quickly erodes in the last hundred pages. He seems almost eager to divulge his true identity towards the end. The ultimate doubts come towards the very end, when the narrator, Charles Kinbote, adds an anecdote about how he might make a play about two men with delusions of being a prince and his assassin, when that was the underlying plot of Kinbote’s tangent. The setup of the poet’s death itself is rather fishy, and given the evidence towards his creepy stalker-ish tendencies and eccentricities, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Kinbote had been plotting his hero’s death the entire time, since the assassin’s incompetence was too painfully obvious. But just so he could get his hands on a poem? Pale Fire leaves us with many more questions than answers.

Pale Fire tells us a very important message: that you can’t always trust the word of the narrator, whether it’s non-fictional or not, especially if you’re given reasons to doubt him. I paid more attention to the text in order to detect inconsistencies or linguistic slips of the tongue in the narrative that could hint at the “truth” behind the “author” ’s words. And since Nabokov is twice removed from the text instead of once, his own motives and identity are even more disguised. Yet it can also be a very enjoyable read: Kinbote’s voice was very droll and entertaining, even if his tangents proved frustrating for me at first. I found myself laughing both at him and with him, reading more to find out what exactly his game was, as opposed to uncovering any plot twists (though they are certainly there). As one of the quintessential postmodern novels, Pale Fire is a good example of the boundaries that are pushed and questions raised when conventions are not just thwarted, but either cast into the wind or put to satire.

Hibernation

It's been a long while since I've been on this blog, due to stuff like work and school taking up 100% of my time. But out of this I have some good news! For one, I'm graduating college! Yay for real life! And, more importantly, I've found a new direction--or just a direction--to take this blog!

So from now on, I'm sticking to review, critique, and analysis of one of three things: literature (my love), film, and pop culture (which basically covers all other forms of entertainment, but also news and media criticism). And to start of with this new format, I'll be doing a little series on postmodern literature, putting up the first post by sometime next week.

OK, back to hibernation.

Final Bronte Review: Anne's Agnes Grey

Have any of you heard of Anne Bronte or Agnes Grey? Me, neither, until two months ago.
So I didn't know anything about this novel, except that the title character was also a governess...though her tenure as one is not nearly as pleasant as Jane Eyre's. It's the shortest of the bunch, and I have to say, I'm glad it was so brief.

Agnes Grey started out strong, albeit rushed: she's left her childhood home by the end of the first chapter. I sympathized with her in the second, as she dealt with evil, unruly little shits and their uncooperative parents. Unlike Jane, Agnes winds up quitting her first gig and returns home, then gets another job as a governess. The next set of children, while better than the first, are also corrupted and disagreeable...yet she somehow manages to stay on with this family for almost three years. The major conflicts in the story fizzle before we're through ten chapters.

The rest of the novel is, indeed, a romance. Agnes' elder pupil, Rosalie, is in active pursuit of a suitor, and Agnes herself falls in love with the new curate, Mr. Weston. While I commend the execution of this part of the tale--I felt for Rosalie even though she kind of deserved the unhappy marriage she wound up getting, and Agnes' feelings for Mr. Weston were developed and described with realism--it seemed to forget what the hell it was about in the beginning. One can say that it's about the pursuit of happiness, as Agnes has found it at its conclusion, while others (Rosalie in particular) have lost it because they did not follow their hearts. But that doesn't excuse the fact that I saw how things would end a mile away, and the last page itself was woefully rushed (it went something like this: we lived happily ever after, the end).

So, while the story is very realistic in plot, language, and characterization, it lacks enough conflict (for me) to keep the story engaging. The second half is pretty predictable, for the most part, and that makes it a little dull. No wonder Anne's first novel (she wrote another book, which I haven't read) has faded in literary memory among the general public. It's not nearly as exciting as Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. (And I don't think the fact that Mr. Weston isn't a "bad boy" has anything to do with it.)

I give it...three-point-five out of five stars (the writing itself is good enough to give it that high of a rating). Anyone who likes stories about nice people becoming happy and not-so-nice people not being happy might like this stories. If you're not a fan of the other Brontes, you probably won't like this one, either.

2: Emily's Wuthering Heights

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

At first, I wasn't very interested in reading Wuthering Heights: all that I knew of the plot were the words "Heathcliff", "moors", "ghost", and most glaringly, "romance". That last one really turned me off, as I eschew romances in the contemporary sense of the word. However, I've come to understand that "romance" was what novels used to be called, perhaps even as recent as the Brontes' day. And the only copy of Jane Eyre that I could find at the library also contained Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. So I figured, why not just read all three of them?

Thus far, I have not regretted that decision. The first chapter of Wuthering Heights was a little confusing for me, so it took some time to get into the story. However, within the first five chapters I was immediately swept into the drama of the Earnshaw and Linton families, and of course Heathcliff, the infamous ruffian himself. Unlike Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights is a legit page-turner: I wanted to just keep on reading until I found out what happened next. The vast majority of the story is told within an external narrative (the housekeeper, who has witnessed all of this, tells the tenant Mr. Lockwood, who is the narrator of the novel), which creates an interesting perspective, as in a way we hear from all sides of the story. And it makes the characters' true motivations shrouded in mystery and intrigue, which creates great drama.

The novel's strongest point, though, is its characters. They are so tragic and complex, and all of them just about unlikeable--especially Heathcliffs Sr. and Jr.--at one point or another. Yet you can't help but like them, for all their flaws and redeeming qualities. Even though I knew that Catherine and Heathcliff may not have had a perfect fairy-tale ending to their romance, had they pursued it, I wanted them to be together, and became convinced that the tragedy of Shakespearean proportions that followed their separation could have been prevented, if they didn't deny their feelings. I was angry and frustrated near the end when Catherine Jr. fell into Heathcliff's trap of greed and misery, but was so happy that she had found love with Hareton after all, and would be happy again.
I was even on Heathcliff's side, in spite of all the horrible things that he did in his lifetime. After reading his backstory, I understood his anger and sorrow, and couldn't help but think up responses on his behalf when Mrs. Dean (the real narrator of the actual story) made disparaging comments about him. Even though if I knew a guy like Heathcliff, I wouldn't like him at all. He's not a jerk--he's a misunderstood jerk.

Plus, there's ghosts in it. And that makes just about any story better.

I have hardly a negative thing to say about Emily Bronte's masterpiece. The ending was quite satisfying (and fitting), the characters didn't ramble on all that much, the plot was riveting, and the characters were richly developed, depicted in both sympathetic and unsympathetic lights. Even though the story was tragic, there's even a kind-of-happy end to the whole thing. Quite simply, I loved it, from page one, on. Five stars out of five, and I recommend it to EVERYONE!

Last, but not least: Agnes Grey, by youngest sister Anne!

Review 1: Charlotte's Jane Eyre

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!
I first came across Jane Eyre in a favorite YA series of mine: The Princess Diaries. In volume 4, Mia's autocratic grandmother gives her the book to read (for a reason I don't recall), and she quickly becomes enthralled in the romance between Jane and Mr. Rochester. I got the gist of Jane Eyre's plot from this and other books that referenced the novel, while I know little to none about Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. I already knew about the romance, the crazy wife, and the fire. Perhaps this helped to lower my excitement about reading this particular novel.

I really enjoyed reading the first half: learning of her horrible childhood really put me on Jane's side, and she was very relatable with her strange and bookish behavior. The story was expertly written, since it was compelling and easy to follow, disproving the notion that centuries-old novels are somehow difficult to get through due to trivial differences in language and structure. I did get annoyed with the long-winded soliloquies of St. John (Jane's second suitor) and Mr. Rochester (though perhaps this was a commonplace writing style at the time). In spite of the gross age difference between Jane and Mr. Rochester, and Jane's passivity, I was able to enjoy most of the novel. Hell, even Bertha's appearance as a black monstrosity of a woman was tolerable, since that was the way most of English society thought of Black people at the time.


But as the novel progressed, it seemed to get more ridiculous, ruled by deus ex machina. First, Jane finds people who take her in after she runs away from Thornfield Hall, and they happen to be relations! And they like her a lot! Then it turns out that Mr. Rochester's wife, Bertha, had died in the fire that she had caused! He had even tried to save her, the noble man that he is! Now she can get back together with Mr. Rochester! Yay! A happy ending was produced artificially, forced by the author's hand. It seemed as if Charlotte couldn't stand to give anyone but the most vicious characters a sad end.

Even St. John, whom I detested for his orthodox prudishness (he refused to take Jane with him to India without marrying her first, though they were related, purely because he found it "improper"! I wished the whole time that Jane would just tell him off, and she did...but then she agreed, even though she had said that she didn't want to), was given a good ending - and the last three paragraphs of the novel! He was only in the last ten chapters of the book, so I do not get why he had to get the last three paragraphs. It talked about him dying, and ended with a quote about Jesus: a total non sequitor to the whole story, as I gathered that Jane was not a particularly religious woman.

And in spite of Mr. Rochester's injuries, he and Jane apparently had a happy marriage, and even had kids! (There is a mention of a firstborn on the last page, and nothing more, so I assume they had at least two healthy children.) While it sends a good message that a woman can love a disfigured man that she had known in health, Jane's willingness to return to him and care for him rubbed me the wrong way. Mr. Rochester had been a real jerk, and she was young yet: there could have been other suitors, had she sought for another post as a governess or schoolmistress. While Jane (the narrator of the tale) ended at a happy time in her life, unhappiness would surely be on the horizon. Mr. Rochester's aging, worsened by his injuries, could overburden her as a wife and mother, and the 20-year age difference will surely send her to early widowhood. And she doesn't seem to have a problem with that, which is kind of what bothers me most of all. Jane, in the end, was not strong enough to forge her own path (I chalk it up to her personality), and relied on a man, either St. John or Mr. Rochester, to help guide her way. Given that the novel was written in the 1840s, one can hardly think that it would be necessarily feminist as the term is defined today, (and Charlotte was certainly not unfeminist) but that was just one of the many things that irked me about Jane's character. The sentimentality of her narration, her passive attitude towards issues of great importance (like going to India with St. John - she lets how he feels trump how she feels about it!), and lack of a sense of adventure and curiosity (except when it came to Mr. Rochester) had me frustrated.

However, this novel totally PWN'd anything that Dickens ever wrote, as I actually liked it. I give it three out of five stars, and recommend it to anyone who feels like reading a 300-page novel from the 19th century.

Next up: Wuthering Heights, by middle sister Emily!

Why Review the Classics?

Happy belated fourth, everyone! Hope y'all enjoyed some fireworks.
For my first July post, I'm going to begin with an introduction to a series of reviews that I will be doing over the next couple of weeks on books that you may have heard of: the Big Three novels by the Bronte sisters. Yes, there are three of them: Bronte sisters, that is. I didn't know of this fact myself until I stumbled across this gem almost two months ago:



You may wonder, "Why bother reviewing the Bronte sisters? Their books have been out for 200 years! The academics say that they're good, so while some of us will pick up and read them ourselves, most will either read them in school or never pick up a copy cuz they're just too long and boring."
Well I'm reading them just due to that latter group, to which I had belonged after struggling to stay awake while reading Pride and Prejudice (on my own perogative, no less). Only recently has my interest in reading novels by long-dead dudes and dudettes been renewed.

As to why I want to review them, it rings true for all the classics. For one, such works of literature that are considered a part of the classics canon should be put to the test of timelessness every few decades: a masterpiece may still resonate for hundreds, even thousands, of years after it was first written, but that resonance is likely to fade and eventually diminish over time. Very few great novels can last past the hundred-year mark, and fewer every century after that.
Another reason to evaluating classic works of literature decades after they've been declared classics is that times change. What seems great enough to be a classic one century may not be so the next. Just because students have read Homer and Shakespeare in school for over a hundred years doesn't mean that we should continue to study them in a hundred more years. Not least because literature curricula could stand to be more diverse in its perspective. And the presence of racism, classism, and misogyny, though not grounds for dismissal from the canon (especially not), should at least be pointed out. And as we learn more about specific time periods, we can better examine the classics through a historical lens and evaluate how progressive or influential it was in its time. Then we can ultimately decide whether this classic is worth reading by students and academics. (It's sad that anything over 100 years old is almost automatically relegated to the academic sphere, but that is another post.)

Lastly, just because a whole bunch of people say that something is so great it's a masterpiece, doesn't mean it is.

Next post, I will review the eldest, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Spilling into Summer

It's been over two months since the horrendous oil spill started happening, and we don't seem much closer to plugging that leak. This should have been old news by now. Most people at this point are rapidly losing hope with, well, everyone and everything. It's like Hurricane Katrina all over again, except worse, as the environmental and economic toll will likely reverberate throughout the country for months, even years, to come.

As the saga has gone on, I've noticed something about its coverage. Specifically that outright lies have been exposed, and the public is getting increasingly angry and frustrated with the government. Perhaps because I have gotten the bulk of my information on the spill from The Daily Show, I think no one has done a better job of conveying this outrage at BP and federal lawmakers than Jon Stewart. Though I can take or leave The Daily Show a lot of the time, it's really been in top form in its coverage of the oil spill. Like a real news program should, The Daily Show has exposed the truth behind all the fabrications and contradictions (which politicians seem to do a lot) surrounding the oil spill. Stewart has also made some very valid criticism about President Obama in some recent episodes (that article is a great read, btw). In some cases it's less of a satirical news program, and more of a media-critique show.



And though it's old news, a lot of people, when polled, have cited The Daily Show as their primary news source. In a Time Magazine online poll, 44% of Americans said that Jon Stewart was the most trusted newscaster, significantly ahead of the competition. People have said it before, and I'll say it again: though it's great that The Daily Show has good writing and sharp wit, it's a sad state of affairs when a comedy show is the most trusted, unbiased source for news. Our news circuit has become a circus, the majority of which - some newspapers, magazines, and websites included - simply parrot bias, ideology, and sensationalism over substance and even the facts. It distracts, rather than brings to light, the important issues, like why America hasn't gotten off of oil when every president since Nixon has said that we must do so, and why politicians seem to conflate "small businesses" with huge corporate conglomerates, and questioning the merits of a two-party system and closed primaries.

However, from the few clips of the mainstream media's coverage that I have seen, it seems like maybe they're actually doing journalism for once. On The Daily Show, (for the most part) the joke's been on the businessmen and politicians, not the media. Perhaps this massive disaster is finally prompting some real reporting on issues that people actually care about, and this could bring about some real change. Sorry, Obama, but your impressive vocabulary will not power our cars and our homes. Solar panels and wind turbines will, though.
We can all hope that maybe this time, people will stop talking and start doing.

The Best Bad Movie Line...Ever

Hey there invisible readers. I've been pretty busy lately, and uninspired, so not much time for blogging.
But the other day, I came across this movie, The Wizard. You wouldn't think of it as a contender for "Best Worst Movie", like Troll 2 or The Room. It's just a forgettable 80s kid's movie, right?
Wrong. The following clip is the worst attempt at incorporating slang into dialogue that I have ever come across. The line is obviously forced, and the execution is terrible. And it's hilarious. I've watched it at least five or so times since I first came across it, and I still crack up! It's just so bad.


The best part is at the end, around 2:15.

That kid really nailed down the irony of that line.
This alone makes me want to see The Wizard...

Mrs. Dalloway: the Anti Miss Bennet

Yesterday I finished reading one of Virgina Woolf's most acclaimed novels, Mrs. Dalloway. I'm still not sure if I really like it or if it's just "eh". The language is very beautiful, and the perspectives flow into one another really nicely, but it was very difficult to focus sometimes and to find a place to pause. I blame that on the whole stream-of-consciousness fad that was modernism. She, like Joyce and Faulkner, just loves her long-winded sentences way too much. And it was jarring to have so many characters be so abruptly introduced.

However, Mrs. Dalloway was certainly superior to the snorefest that was Pride and Prejudice, the only Jane Austen novel I have read. There were a lot of similarities between these two novels though they were written about a century apart: they both take place in England and center around the activities of high society. Mrs. Dalloway's backstory even resembled Pride and Prejudice somewhat, with two suitors vying for her heart. But Woolf's novel has such a dark outlook on it: all of the characters suffer from some sort of inner pain or regret that they seem to dwell on constantly but cannot change, whether it be a lost opportunity or thoughts of how things might have been of of selling out. Pride and Prejudice may feature a strong heroine and good writing, but everyone's happy at the end. Plus, it's all about a romance: hardly any grand existential musings can be found here!

Perhaps it's just my bias against romance novels. I've never really considered them to be particularly important or interesting. To be fair, I find the likes of Charles Dickens equally dull. I also much prefer the more "literary" work that's been published in the last century. Aside from Shakespeare and Homer (and other exceptions), I haven't liked very much of what literature has had to offer before the 1900s.

Woolf was certainly not anti-Austen: as a self-described feminist, how could she be? And Austen is certainly a valuable example of 19th century fiction, just as Woolf is of 20th century literature. All women's voices are important when examining history. But Woolf definitely broke more rules than Austen and really challenged our idea of what is literature: I mean, Mrs. Dalloway takes place in the space of a day, and most of it's spent in the nostalgic characters' heads! But would Austen have done the same if she lived in the same era? Perhaps Woolf is not the Anti-Austen, but Austen incarnate...

And this, my friends, is why we can't compare people who lived in completely different eras.

What's so girly about reading?

Welcome to the first relevant post.

The other day I came across this article on Salon.com, asking the question, "why men don't read books". While it makes an interesting point about the publishing industry, like how lately, it's been female-dominated, the article fails at answering the question it asked in the first place. And the question worth asking is more like, "Why are fewer men reading books?" But that doesn't make a very catchy headline.

As a writing student, I've noticed that the vast majority of my classmates are female. Most of my male peers aren't exactly big readers. I find it strange that there's been such a gender gap (which is about 20 percent) in reading and writing, especially since that even into the twenty-first century, many of the most important and influential writers have been male: Kurt Vonnegut, Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Palahniuk, Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace...I could go on and on. A shortage of male writers or male-oriented literature is not the issue. And if anything, the overall decline of reading is much more troubling.
So, why this gap?

Like a lot of formerly male-dominated fields (psychology and art, for example), reading and writing are increasingly seen as a "girl's activity". The problem with that is that anything that's "for girls/women" tends to be de-valued and considered to be not as "important" as what is "for men". Just look at the women's movement: women have only gotten the rights they deserve by fitting themselves into "man's world", and that's a big reason why there's still so much more left to do. Men who pursue these "girly" activities, like dance, housework, fashion, and now reading, can be perceived as effeminate by their (sexist, closed-minded, ignorant) peers. And being "effeminate" is much worse than being perceived as "boyish" or "masculine" in our society.

Then there's the whole myth of film and TV being more lucrative creative professions. This may be true to an extent, but like all other creative endeavors, chances are that you won't get hugely rich or famous, especially if you're a writer. Most of us are in it for the love of storytelling, not to make mad moolah.

So why are fewer men reading books - and especially fiction books? Possibly because they think that fewer men are reading (and writing) books. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hello, who are you?

Hello and welcome. Also, happy Mother's Day.
I'm calling myself "the obsoletist" for a lot of reasons: not least of which because I am a little late when it comes to catching on to trends. I've only just gotten into this whole blogging thing. I also love books, handwritten letters, and other such printed material that is rapidly in the process of becoming archaic and obsolete. As an avid reader and writer, I will probably be commenting on the so-called "death of print" a lot.
Throughout the life of this blog you can expect a whole lot of my opinions on just about everything under the sun: current events, hot topics, movies, music, books, etc., etc. Feel free to disagree. But I'll also work in some analysis on news events and the news media, and I hope that this will bring in a fresh perspective on these stories.

Now here's an old music video for mothers everywhere.
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Come back soon for the first "real" post!