Jesse

The main thesis is that police exist and have always existed primarily to maintain and enforce the dominant social order, not, as they are often perceived, to enforce laws. Neocleous sets about debunking a number of myths aimed at obscuring the political nature of police power.

There are some interesting points about vagrancy laws and the way they enable the discretionary power vital to police function—their origin lies not in a reaction to crime or social disorder, but in an enforcement of the performance of labour vital to the constitution of capitalist order. “Vagrancy is regarded by the ruling class as a crime against capitalist order in general, a kind of ur crime from which all other crime stems.”

While there's undoubtedly some good stuff in here, I didn't find it compellingly written and threw in the towel after about 100 pages.

A day in the life of several married women living in the fictional middle class suburb of Arlington Park, culminating (in true Cusk style) in a dinner party.I found the opening sections compelling—every exchange was stuffed with tension and subtext—but the waters were gradually muddied with less elegantly-handled class commentary. It grates slightly to read someone of Cusk's background picking at the threads of aspiration culture, class mobility, and internalised misogyny in this way.Outside in the shop a sudden crowd had formed at the till, of girls with sunglasses pushed back on their heads and girls in tiny vests, girls with hair chemically coloured, curled or straightened, fat girls with white elephant's legs in short skirts, girls who were morose or screamed with laughter or talked into their mobile phones.But it's not all misses on that front:None of them, not even Joe, understood what it was to be so proximate to oblivion. They were hallmarked, like silver: they saw the world as categorised, not chaotic. But she, Christine, was only one generation removed from abandonment: she, the offspring of a scrap, a piece of litter blowing in the wind, felt always the presence of the enormous darkness from which she had come.A flavour of resentment (born of wasted potential and sacrifice) underscores each section, punctuated with impotent acts of rebellion, which works to unite the women, but also homogenises their characters, making them increasingly difficult to distinguish.The feelings expressed around motherhood are expectedly and refreshingly honest, but I felt most sentiments had already been excellently covered in [b:A Life's Work 522426 A Life's Work On Becoming a Mother Rachel Cusk https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312001649l/522426.SX50.jpg 930836]. And maybe it's because I'm accustomed to Cusk's sparser Outline-era voice, but I found the maximalist descriptions of shopping centres, suburban streets and parks uninspiring, and often cringily grandiose:A young man in an anorak flew his kite, his legs astride on the grass, his arms braced against the powerfully tugging strings as if he were holding on to the world itself.Some more bits I liked:Juliet never thought about school until the moment she walked through its wrought-iron gates. It was Benedict who thought, in order to be extraordinary. He ran off their joint life as if it were a generator fuelled by Juliet, and then he separated himself and thought.All men are murderers, Juliet thought. All of them. They murder women. They take a woman, and little by little they murder her.It was hard, harder than she'd expected it to be, to take the vigorous, joyful, wild body of Katherine and clothe it in a school uniform. Until that moment the possibilities for Katherine had seemed endless.Katherine's femaleness had seemed like a joyful, a beautiful thing. It had seemed invincible, even in its halfformed fragility. She had not realised what she was. She had only delighted in it, in her female being.Now, though, she was different. She knew she was a girl. She returned from school full of a kind of programmatic agony. Her soul was in training. They had told her what she was, and now she knew. She didn't play with the boys in the playground, she told Juliet. Juliet asked why not, and Katherine shrugged.None of the girls do, she said.Amanda felt that if she were not married, it would not have been required of her to go to the butcher.These visits seemed to emanate from a core of physical embroilment, from a fleshly basis that sought out other flesh by which to feed itself. It all seemed somehow grotesquely related, the conjoining and making of bodies and the dismemberment and ingestion of them.The room, the house, even Arlington Park itself, increasingly wore for her the lineaments of a lived past into which future possibilities were unable to intrude; of a fundamental sadness that was the unalterable relic of experience.

It's giving By Grand Central Station. Heavy on the Wittgenstein and Plato, but light on the narrative or thematic cohesion. Nelson makes the decision to restrict details of her lover to the type of sex they were having (for fear of displacing her memories with her writing, as with childhood photographs), but what results for me is a paradoxical combination of deep, powerful longing and nonchalance that I struggled to connect with.

At a job interview at a university, three men sitting across from me at a table. On my cv it says that I am currently working on a book about the color blue. I have been saying this for years without writing a word. It is, perhaps, my way of making my life feel “in progress” rather than a sleeve of ash falling off a lit cigarette. One of the men asks, Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don't get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don't get to choose.

Once Belcourt finds a way to relegate his academic discourse to the framework of a novel rather than explicitly referencing every theoretician in the text, it's over for you hoes.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from Candide, but something about the way Maggie Nelson dropped Voltaire's famous quote about killing an admiral to encourage the others into Bluets made me feel like I was missing out having not read something of his.

Candide comprises a series of unfortunate events constructed to test (or ridicule) the philosophical premise that we live in “the best of all possible worlds.” If Voltaire had called the novel Fuck You, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz—Philosophical Optimism is Trash and So Are You I would have been better prepared.

It was at its best for me when contemplating happiness (and, briefly, suicide). I imagine the maxim ‘money can't buy happiness' may already have been tired in the 17th century, but either way it's well-expressed here.

I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley—in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered—or simply to sit here and do nothing?

I'm not usually one to balk at long novels, but I would have enjoyed this one a lot more had it been around a third of the length. I'd be happy on one level to see someone pull out a cleaver and produce a bastardised version, leaving the narrative framework that a western reader would feel safest with and leaving dense and unfamiliar modes of address, stories and references in a messy heap on the floor, but I'd know somehow that the true heart of the novel would be left there with the offal.

I couldn't find peace with the seemingly redundant meta-commentary. “There's no harm in starting the story right here, that is, the way we're doing it right now,” it's stated early on. “Not much need be said about [whomever/whatever], as the story doesn't really concern [them/it],” begging the question of why this subject was dragged up in the first place. These explicit goiters of inefficiency, as George Saunders might refer to them, layered on frustration for me that was not shaken off by any later re-incorporation or reveal.

I am grateful for the exposure to themes of partition, despite the opening of part three being maybe the most lost I've ever been reading a book.

I wanted more on Bahu and her Reeboks.

So much for swearing off books featuring adultery. Four stars in spite of the fact that I now know my repartee will always be inadequate.

Some lovely prose.
Subject didn't really appeal to me.
A bit predictable.

My wine notes are clearly influencing my book reviews.

“He spoke very sparingly into the tube and one often saw that he wanted to make some objection to the speaker, or to ask him some question, but certain words he heard forced him instead, before he could say anything, to lower his eyes and write.”

“The smoke from Mr Green's cigar, a present from Pollunder, of a thickness that his father would occasionally affirm existed, but had probably never witnessed with his own eyes, spread throughout the room, and carried Green's influence into nooks and corners in which he would personally never set foot.”

“In the early days, Karl had high hopes of his piano playing, and while lying in bed, at any rate, he thought it might have a direct effect upon his American environment. But it did sound very peculiar when, with the windows letting in the noisy air from outside, he played an old ballad from his homeland, which the soldiers sing to each other in the evenings as they lean out through the barrack windows gazing at the dark square outside – but then, when he looked out on to the street, it was just the same, a tiny piece, no more, of a gigantic circulatory system that couldn't be arrested without understanding all the forces operating on its totality.”

“The first days of a European in America were like a new birth, and while Karl shouldn't be afraid, one did get used to things here faster than when entering the human world from beyond, he should bear in mind that his own initial impression did stand on rather shaky feet, and he shouldn't allow them any undue influence over subsequent judgements, with the help of which, after all, he meant to live his life.”

Tchitchikov comes to town and beguiles the locals with his expertly-refined respectful and flattering inclination of the head. Gogal portrays the various caricaturish land owners with comic brilliance.



“At last he sniffed out something about his private life: he found out that he had a rather mature daughter whose face also looked as if the devil had threshed peas on it.”

“... the by-roads ran zig-zagging to and fro like crabs when they are shaken out of a sack... “

“... as soon as a petitioner came forward and thrust his hand into his pocket in order to extract therefrom the familiar letters of recommendation signed by Prince Hovansky, as the expression is among us in Russia—“No, no,” he would say with a smile, stopping the petitioner's hand, “do you imagine that I ... no, no! this is our duty, the work we are bound to do without any recompense!”

“The postmaster cried out, slapped himself on the forehead and called himself a calf publicly before them all. He could not understand how the circumstance had not occurred to him at the beginning of the story, and confessed that the saying, “The Russian is wise after the event,” was perfectly true.”

“It was an apparition, like the sudden appearance of a drowned man at the surface of the water, that calls forth a shout of joy in the crowd upon the bank; but in vain the rejoicing brothers and sisters let down a cord from the bank .”

“... have saved the situation is wasted on all sorts of ways of inducing forgetfulness. The mind from which, perhaps, great resources might have sprung sleeps; and the estate is knocked down at auction and the owner is cast adrift to forget his troubles with his soul ready in his extremity for base deeds at which he would once have been horrified.”

“The odour of Petrushka, the footman, made an effort to establish itself in the vestibule adjoining, but Petrushka was soon banished to the kitchen, which was indeed a more suitable place for him.”

“... and wait for another glimpse of the back or the arms exhausted with struggling—that appearance was the last. All is still and the unrippled surface of the implacable element is still more terrible and desolate than before. So the face of Plyushkin, after the feeling that glided for an instant over it, looked harder and meaner than ever.”

“And at last he began prancing up and down and rubbing his hands, and humming and murmuring, and putting his fist to his mouth blew a march on it as on a trumpet, and even uttered aloud a few encouraging words and nicknames addressed to himself, such as “bulldog” and “little cockerel.”

“Whereupon the two gentlemen, going up to the table which was laid with savouries, duly drank a glass of vodka each; they took a preliminary snack as is done all over the vast expanse of Russia, throughout the towns and villages, that is, tasted various salt dishes and other stimulating dainties; then all proceeded to the dining-room; the hostess sailed in at their head like a goose swimming.”

“... no money, nor even estates with or without improvements can procure a digestion like that of a middle-class gentleman.”

“Upon my word, my dear fellow, what Jewish propensities you have! You ought simply to give them to me.”

“... the dappled grey was doubtless longing for a sermon, for the reins were always slack and the whip was merely passed over their backs as a matter of form when the garrulous driver was holding forth.”

“Why do you tell me that my estate is in a bad way, my lad?” says the landowner to his steward, “I know that, my dear fellow, without your telling me; have you nothing better than that to say? Let me forget it; let me not know it, then I shall be happy.” And so the money which might to some extent”

“Tchitchikov looked: the sleeve of his quite new dress-coat was completely spoilt. “Plague take you, you confounded little imp!” he muttered to himself in his wrath.”

“The lawyer impressed Tchitchikov by the coldness of his expression and the greasiness of his dressing-gown, which was in striking contrast to the very good mahogany furniture, the gold clock under a glass shade, the chandelier that peeped through a muslin cover, put on to preserve it, and in fact to all the objects round them which bore the unmistakable imprint of enlightened European culture.”

Power dynamics, class consciousness and privilege, social and intellectual coming of age, and consent. Crucially, this story is told not from the fierce inflexible position of a woman whose actions begin to destabilise the entrenched misogyny and entitlement of wealthy USYD colleges, but through Michaela's pragmatic, empathetic and nuanced lens. Hers is a voice that considers and balances all the social, political, and personal pressures she is under. It's a voice that, when not added to the pyre, is taken from her.

Reid's writing is searingly intelligent. Humorous and cutting in her insightful portrayals of the reductive feminism on display in these institutions:

Eve signed up to represent Fairfax in drama, with a piece promisingly titled: What Women Want. Self-proclaimed feminist content usually fared well with the judges, who were looking for ‘diverse voices' and, being former college residents themselves, usually looked no further than recent Sydney private school graduates.”

‘I was so disappointed in her when I found out.' This was not something Eve had expressed to me. I admired how expertly she was manipulating her disappointment—fashioning it into a personal joke, which I would spoil if I treated it seriously, much less defended myself.

* I acknowledge others' point that comparisons to Rooney here are reductive, but I feel she is the gold standard for many in this space. Blame Meg Mason for invoking her on the inside cover!

“Fear—of being drawn to another man whose phlegmatic nature will limit and distort mine—or for whose sake I will limit and distort myself.“

It's refreshingly intimate to read a text that hasn't been crafted for an audience. You can no longer indulge in speculation at the author's intention—instead you're released to gaze at the fragmentary insights, de-focusing your vision (as for a Magic Eye), and marvelling as a picture of a life emerges.

I recognised the brutality of unchecked self-criticism as it presented itself here. Garner deals constantly with criticism of her work and her worth as a writer, but remains her own harshest critic.

I am the only person in the world who carries round an inventory of my crimes. Everyone else is busy with their own.

When I was not yet ‘a writer' I used to write colossal, twenty-page letters to people. Now I communicate on the backs of postcards. This thought made me feel quite cheerful, as if I had imperceptibly, over years, and not by the exercise of will, rechannelled wasted energy into a more useful course—but now I mess with the taps, I keep them turned off, or let just a tiny trickle escape.

I like people when they are in a great mass, thousands of lonely or rather solitary blobs, each one with ‘le front barré de souci'. (The forehead crossed out with worry)

It was wonderful to read a novel that centered trans poc characters, and the sharp energy and inventive, vibrant world created by Waidner was, for the most part, a thrill to read. However, for me, the story sat in an uncanny valley between convention and experimentation. The slippery dream logic often strayed towards deus ex machina, which, along with the chaotic pacing, gave the feeling that the narrative was being supplied off the cuff—like the entirety of the novel comprised Cataclysmic Tabloid #43.

Horrifically bad writing. I was literally convulsing as Jessica Andrews smashed me over the head with re-hashed versions of the same overblown metaphors:

I told myself the scrabbling way in which I lived was more real and yet I didn't feel solid at all. I got snagged on everything, my knees black with bruises, twigs and leaves caught in my hair.

I thought I had chosen London as the place where I would make my own life, but its edges were sharp and cruel and I got caught on them, bloodying my ankles and wrists.

And nonsensical similes:

The music is thick with joy and it presses into me like wet sand.

The streets are viscous with heat and piss, bodies spilling from doorways, wrapped in sickly tendrils of weed.

And combinations of the two:

You held a flame between your fingers and I wanted to swallow you, but I was afraid of the taste of my own desire, like bleach and petrol, peaches dipped in salt. You knotted your want into a rope and threw it to me. I shivered in the dawn, counting dead stars, then I reached out my hands and took it.

Midway through the novel comes this unnervingly meta moment:

‘I'm finished,' says Isaac and I pull his exercise book towards me. I asked him to describe his favourite hobby and he has written about eating pizza.‘I love pizza because it is cheesy and tomatoey,' he reads. ‘It is chewy and stringy and soft.'‘Can you write a simile?' I ask him. ‘If you had to compare pizza to something, what would you compare it to?'He thinks for a while, chewing the end of his pen. ‘Pizza is like a soft, warm bed,' he writes, and I smile.

But sadly it isn't a true moment of self awareness; Andrews continues to use her creative writing powers for evil, referring to the love interest in the second person like the whole novel is a self-conscious creative writing exercise that got out of hand.

Not only does Andrews describe the world she's created in garish (read “vivid and lyrical”?) unnatural gradients and hues, but the characters of this world speak this way too. The love interest writes her a message at one point:

It has just rained and the sky is the colour of a cantaloupe melon. The clouds are bruised lemons and I'm sitting beneath an orange tree. I'm writing in my journal, wondering who collects the oranges when they fall from the trees and what happens to them afterwards.

The grief trumpets its triumph. It is raving. It craves violence for expression, but can find none. There is no end. The drowning never ceases. The water submerges and blends, but I am not dead. O I am not dead. I am under the sea. The entire sea is on top of me.

For me, good poetry has an element of universality; the act of reading/interpretation becomes itself an act of authorship (à la Barthes). But the emotional charge in By Grand Central Station seems tied to Smart's personal experience in a way that limits its accessibility. It feels both shockingly public and elusively private.

I wanted the text to be either more or less coherently grounded in the reality of the events Smart was chronicling (events that require research in order to follow with any degree of clarity). At times the narrative context is handed directly to the reader, but at other times it's completely obscured (often in its place Smart asks us to build impressions on a sparse framework of intertextual references), while the sense of it being crucial to the text's interpretation remains frustratingly present.

There's no denying the power of the cutting imagery that flashes throughout this work, but ultimately I just wasn't moved by this in the way that I thought I might be.

What a great way to round out a year of reading. Displacement and alienation, loneliness, trauma, love and war, absurdity and allegory, ritual and tradition, faith. It's terrifying, moving, and enlightening. Statovci repeatedly knocked the air out of my lungs. The translation is excellent—the language cohesive and economical. The more surreal moments reminded me of Bulgakov's [b:The Master and Margarita 117833 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327867963l/117833.SY75.jpg 876183], grounded in a more sinewy, visceral narrative.The cat wanted a story whose protagonist's life began from a set of impossible circumstances, a story that would be so heart-wrenching that it might make him shake his head at the state of the world. But he wanted the story to end in such a way that he was able to applaud the protagonist's ability to take matters into his own hands—despite the fact that the protagonist had learned that skill specifically so that he could shake off the burden of other people's pity—and in order to reaffirm his own beliefs. Anyone can change the direction of his life, any time at all, if only he has enough motivation: that was the moral of the story. The cat found it easier to believe this than to think about what it actually meant: that the word anyone actually referred to a very small group of people, that time has no direction, and that motivation is rarely the salient difference between people.

Beautiful (in that brutal, tragic way we all love so much) and thought-provoking, up until the final story (which happens, also, to be by far the longest).

Filled with metaphors that harness the raw senses and impressions of the South with horrifying and unexpected potency. “Her mind is a pink meshbag filled with baby toes.”

I was vibing with the free indirect speech early on, but as Stephen's sense of self importance grew, my interest waned. The uncritical portrayal of this adolescent self-aggrandisement is no doubt realistic, but I'm not sure I could take another page of his lectures on esthetics. I also felt that the same effect with regards to religion could have been achieved without dedicating half the novel to sermons.

Siddhartha, but make it seagulls.

Oblomov's lethargy contributed to a lack of momentum / purpose that made getting through the first 150 pages a slog. I have the industrious German-Russian Stolz to thank for rousing him from his aristocratic stupor. “Now or never!”For a good portion of the novel the reader is drawn uneasily into Oblomov's disillusioned vision of recreating the childhood bliss of Oblomovka, and indeed it seems that Stolz's ties to this idyllic childhood may have been the only thing granting him such a power over Oblomov.Oblomov's failure to transcend into a more modern or adult vision of the future, as nurtured by Olga (by kind of proxy for Stolz), and the passive way it which he handles it, should not come as a shock—particularly as he himself suggested that it was the only way. Yet somehow it still manages to evoke a frustration that carries through until the final cathartic epilogue-like chapters of the novel.I found the themes of squandered privilege relatable, and was interested in Oblomov's role in the greater social criticism of the twilight of the Russian aristocratic class of land-owners, serfdom, etc. It echoes the ‘end of an era' feeling of [a:Turgenev 410680 Ivan Turgenev https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1239589274p2/410680.jpg]'s [b:Fathers and Sons 19117 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1390793535s/19117.jpg 1294426], in its reflection on the shift in priorities and education of the new generation, who no longer consider Pushkin one of Russia's finest authors.What did he read about literature?' asked Oblomov.‘Well, he read that the best authors were Dmitriyev, Karam-zin, Batyushkov, and Zhukovsky.'‘What about Pushkin?'‘Never mentioned him. I, too, wondered why he wasn't mentioned. Why, he was a genius!' said Alexeyev, pronouncing the g in genius hard.Stolz seems to represent a modernity that the Russians are not yet ready for. They criticise his German efficiency as “stingy or crafty”, seeing, as Oblomov does, hard work as beneath them. This view is even shared by, to an extent, the lower class. The less one works, the more cultured one is.We see this new direction demonstrated in the late interaction with Zakhar, who complains that the removing one's master's boots is no longer a necessary duty—gentry are quite happy to do it for themselves. I find it interesting, then, that this modern sensibility does not carry over to class barriers. In spite of everything else, it is only Oblomov's ties to the servant-class Agafia Pshenitsina that convince Stolz that the cause is a lost one. It seems a dark mark on an otherwise illuminating character, and not one that is given any expatiation.The deceit of Taranteyev and Ivan Matveyevich (drove the narrative forward) and had an almost Twain-like feel. The book grew in my estimation as a progressed and I found the conclusion quite touching. ★★★★SELECTED QUOTES“Dust-covered cobwebs were festooned round the pictures on the walls; instead of reflecting the objects in the room, the mirrors were more like tablets which might be used for writing memoranda on in the dust.”“He understood that acquisition was not a sin, but that it was the duty of every citizen to help to raise the general welfare by honest labour. That was why the greatest part of the pattern of life which he drew in his seclusion was devoted to a fresh plan for re-organization of the estate and dealing with the peasants in accordance with the needs of the times. The fundamental idea of the plan, its arrangement and its main parts had long been ready in his head; only the details, the estimates and the figures remained. He worked untiringly on the plan for several years, thinking it over continually as he was pacing his room or lying down or visiting friends; he kept adding to it or changing various items, recalling what he had thought of the day before and forgotten during the night; and sometimes a new, unexpected idea would flash like lightning through his mind and set it simmering – and the work would start all over again. He was not some petty executor of somebody else's ready-made notions; he had himself created his own ideas and he was going to carry them out.”“After talking to her at one of their meetings, he would continue the conversation at home, so that when Zakhar happened to come in he said to him in the very soft and tender voice in which he had been mentally addressing Olga: ‘You've again forgotten to polish my boots, you bald-headed devil! Take care, or you'll catch it good and proper one day!”“Listen, Ilya, I tell you seriously, you must change your way of life if you don't want to get dropsy or have a stroke. You can have no more hopes for a better future: if an angel like Olga could not carry you on her wings out of the bog in which you are stuck, I can do nothing. But to choose a small field of activity, put your small estate in order, settle the affairs of your peasants, build, plant – all this you can and must do.... I won't leave you alone. Now it is not only your wishes I am carrying out, but also Olga's will: she is anxious – do you hear? – that you should not die altogether, that you should not bury yourself alive, and I promised her to dig you out of your grave.”“Cunning was short-sighted: it saw well only what was happening under its nose, but not at a distance, and that was why it was often caught in the trap it had set for others.”“Oblomov listened, looking at him with anxious eyes. His friend seemed to have held out a mirror to him, and he was frightened when he recognized himself.”“How do you like that?' Stolz interrupted. ‘He seems offended! I recommend him to you as a decent chap and he hastens to disillusion you.'”“Why did she look so intently at me yesterday?' Oblomov thought. ‘Andrey swears that he never mentioned my socks and shirt to her, but spoke of his friendship for me, of how we had grown up and gone to school together – about all the good things we had experienced together, and he also told her how unhappy I was, how everything that is fine in me perishes for lack of sympathy and activity, how feebly life flickers in me and how – – But what was there to smile at?' Oblomov continued to muse. ‘If she had a heart it ought to have throbbed or bled with pity, but instead – oh well, what does it matter what she did! I'd better stop thinking about her! I'll go and dine there to-day – and then I shall never cross the threshold of her house!”“And whatever made me think that she loves me? She did not say so: it is just the satanic whispering of my vanity!”“Cunning was like a small coin with which one could not buy a great deal. Just as a small coin could keep one going for an hour or two, so cunning might help to conceal or distort something or to deceive someone, but it was not sufficient to enable one to scan a far horizon or to survey a big event from beginning to end.”“Society! I suppose, Andrey, you are sending me into society on purpose so as to discourage me from going there. Life! A fine life! What is one to look for there? Intellectual interests? True feeling? Just see whether you can find the centre round which all this revolves; there is no such centre, there is nothing deep, nothing vital. All these society people are dead, they are all asleep, they are worse than I! What is their aim in life? They do not lie about, they scurry to and fro every day like flies, but to what purpose? You come into a drawing-room and you cannot help admiring the symmetrical way in which the visitors are seated – at the card tables! It is indeed an excellent purpose in life! A wonderful example for a mind looking for something exciting. Aren't they all dead men? Aren't they asleep all their life sitting there like that? Why am I more to blame because I lie about at home and do not infect the minds of others with my talk of aces and knaves?' ‘This is all old stuff,' Stolz remarked. ‘It's been said a thousand times before. You've nothing newer, have you?'”“‘Oh dear,' she thought, ‘if only I could be his sister! What happiness it would be to possess a permanent claim on a man like that, not only on his mind, but also on his heart, to enjoy his presence openly and legitimately, without having to pay for it by heavy sacrifices, disappointments, and confessions of one's miserable past.”VOCABsomnolent/somnambulismpanegyricssybariteminatoryverdureprivations

“The witticisms of the local dandies didn't make her laugh.”

“I am very pleased. I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one's guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that's what I call life.”

“At that moment, he raised his eyes—I was standing in the doorway opposite him. He blushed horribly. I walked up to him and said slowly and distinctly: “I am very sorry to have come in after you have already given your honest word in the confirmation of this disgusting slander. My presence saves you from further depravity.”“

“It is a gate formed by nature; it rises up on a high hill, and through it the setting sun throws its last flaming glance to the world.”

———-

“It is a pivotal book that sits on the cusp between Romanticism and Realism, at a moment when Russian literature was forging its path from poetry to the novel.”

“A Hero of Our Time possesses three of the most central characteristics of the Russian novel: 1) psychological analysis; 2) concern with ideas; 3) sociopolitical and ethical awareness. None of these features is the exclusive property of the novel in Russia, but the intensity with which they are engaged does help define the Russian novel and differentiate it from the novel elsewhere.”

“Pechorin is a literary prototype of the “superfluous man” of Russian literature; he is another version of the Byronic antihero; and he is an early model of what would later become a nihilist.”

“The absence of the author, in the sense of a guiding point of view, is a fundamental—and distinctly modern—feature of A Hero of Our Time. Instead, the values of the text are nicely balanced, leaving the reader free to be primarily repelled by the immorality of Pechorin, or fascinated by his personality . . .”

“... duels were meant to be the stuff of honor and heroics, and yet so many duels in Russia at the time were fought over petty disagreements—if not out of sheer boredom. More heroes doing unheroic things in an age of cynicism.”

Still, she couldn't stand his inquisitiveness. Everything he asked her was a plea for affection. He didn't care for her, not really. He only wanted to seduce her by seeming to care, so that she would care for him. Children are selfish, she thought. They rob you of life. They thrive as you toil and wither, and then they bury you, their tears never once falling out of regret for what they've stolen.

Marek, the misshapen and pitiful son of of an abusive and self-flagellating shephard, learns that ascension is achieved not through religious servitude, but (as we knew all along) nepotism. But can anything fill the void left absent of a father's approval?

For the most part, a captivating, repulsive, absurdly humorous work of fabulist fiction. The first half pounds along, driven by shocking events and revelations (achieved by subtle, well-timed shifts between characters' perspectives), but the pace of the second half slows considerably—hijacked by the will and whim of Villiam, who holds the reader hostage at tedious dinner table conversations.

The conclusion brings a rush of change and resolution, but it feels disconnected, hurried, and lacks impact. I expected a neat and considered pay-off owing to the fable-like tone, but was left wanting.

Still loved it, though.

“... the patch is as uniform as a newly fried pancake, almost unbelievably uniform.”

“... then, when risky moments occur, I might even support it gently with my hand, and likewise dance no more—anything to avoid fresh injury through an unguarded movement.”

I took this book with me to the barber to read while I was waiting. My barber noticed it and asked me what I thought, but before I could respond he started to expound on what he thought were the “problems” with Solnit's first essay. I sat quietly as he listed, without realising it, all the reasons that this book, and feminism in general, threaten him and his perspective on the world (i.e. the best bits).

Five stars; minus one for having to find a new barber.

Only women knew the strength it took to love men through their evolution to who they thought they were supposed to be.

Both bloated (in its prose) and devoid of the fabric that, for me, gives a multi-generational tale its weight. The subject matter is highly-charged, but the characters that move throughout feel more puppet than person.

I can accept character-as-stand-in for the purpose of making broader comments on the nature of home, security and violence, but so much of the book's impact hinges on a lack-lustre emotional payload that these positions would be better expressed in a work on non-fiction. As if to reinforce this, the strongest image from the book, and the one that will undoubtedly stick with me the longest, comes from reality—the haunting and devastating story of Omayra Sánchez.

The ending adds to the sense that these characters have not been real with a saccharine against-all-odds, redemptive resolution that reinforces that love and family are the Infinite Country, but at the cost of undermining the themes of generational trauma, and the impact of the book as a whole.