yahoo! This is just a quick post to document my joy. Welcome back, Xtina! I'm so happy we're up and running.
I really enjoyed your Jhumpa post. I think you are on target about many things: the fixedness of characters, the time passing as a major actor, the limited male characters. And you made me much more sympathetic to Sang and helped me understand her situation, her decisions. And Hema and Kushik -- they did have a chance! that sneaky "hope" feeling kept creeping up on me when i was reading those. alas, not in Jhumpa's world...
All the talk of her landscape, the orbiting (or, ahem, rubbing), the isolation helps to close out our discussion of this book and the overall sense that it leaves you with. For me, it was a very space-y "land"scape, with much distance, very gentle, subtle (from our perspective) movements. Hope (sometimes) in the tiniest glimpses. Ok. Goodbye, Jhumpa. It's now been 2 months since I last picked up the book and I feel very ready to close up the talks and put it on the shelf.
And on to Ryschzardddd Kcappuschyinksi! I'm also about halfway through and am so delighted. This feels like a much more personal book that what we just read, a journalist journalizing his own life, bringing in his history and Herodotus's Histories and world histories. He is able to draw you in so quickly, to open up and reveal vulnerabilities and allow us to see through his changing eyes. It feels very anthropology-ish to me, so much context and up front subjectivity and making of big picture connections. His descriptions are very vivid and his insights are just sweet. He talks about how he was studying how to "see" from Herodutus, the ancient times reporter/documentor/anthropologist --- I think I want to learn a bit about seeing from our Polack.
Those are my impressions -- more details to come soon. What are you feeling on this one? You've spent time in China -- did you find anything in his descriptions/experiences that rang true or untrue to you?
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Blog on...Summer Reading
Summer Reading with Shilpitina.
Travels with Herodotus
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
sing, Sang, sung...take us home, jhumpa
Last for me on Jhumpa, but we do need a little closure, right? Not just.........space. And, having a little separation-- a little summer respite and some distance from the queen of distancing people, I feel I can be a firmer book club critic looking back and reviewing some passages.
First of all, I want to say that I think you beautifully captured the major linchpin in the mechanics of her narrative. She invites you to enter a landscape. And this landscape and its main figures may be peculiar to her vision as an author, yet she takes you along with very deliberate steps and images, that almost convince the casual reader that all is inevitable. Characters are walking on a narrow path, to their isolated destinies (destinies that "orbit" as you wrote, or maybe rub up against one another... as I write for the sexual innuendo) and then time trudging on is the force of climax and resolution...not the characters or their potential actions. So Jhumpa provides another kind of fixation...and people are just fixed (in their places and like they're neuters,... get it "fixed" like a cat.).
So Paul and Sang and Farouk, after I read this one, I remember feeling so much tenderness for Sang, she was making some really disturbing/ fucked up choices about a man, but she seemed so unhinged in all other aspects of her life (dropping out of school without a plan, seemingly drifting and a little friendless) that it was really easy to see that she would easily connect to an abuser. Farouk is strange and rigid--maybe she liked this structure even if it didn't bring her very much happiness. And, I don't mean to throw the "abuser" term around lightly, but "I've warned you, Sang...I will not spend my life with a woman who makes scenes." I almost tore a page out and ate it I was so angry... but I didn't want to make a scene.
The thing that I found so interesting in this one were the very limited options available for the male characters...you had either the distant idealizer, Paul: lonely and longingly reading literature, finding a bunch of incomplete versions of women to graft onto his romantic version of Sang. I would cut him more slack, but I really feel like his interaction with her is really so limited. And then Farouk, the dickface (for lack of a better) who rolls up in a BMW, can't stand sleeping together after sex (although, he seems to have no issue with Deirdre), and chides Sang for desiring some openness and ease in their relationship. And finally, I guess I can't leave out the army of anonymous suitors...calling her with little else but her Bengali resume to cling to for conversation. Which seems like a bit of a drain, she has to play-act good humor about this constant bombardment on the house phone. In sum, she's got a lot of bad choices... a delusional Romeo, a dickface, and then a bunch more faceless Romeos. And, she chose the dickface, ain't that just like a woman! In all seriousness, I think its quite human to choose a companion that makes you forget who you are, if all you are wanting to do is forget who you are for awhile.
A little too simplistic in my description of Jhumpa's "landscape"? Do you see more goodwill in Paul's actions than just a dreamy, grad student with a little libido?
Also, Part II: Hema and Kaushik was my favorite. I thought their story was really beautiful, and maybe the only one that dispels the fixation theory, they had a chance, didn't they!?!
I'm halfway through Travels with Herodotus, if you want to move on a blog about the aged Polack.
I'm really excited about Stuffed and Starved too, I think there will be debate, I skimmed it at a bookstore last week.
i just got back from vacation in Seattle, it was excellent, beautiful in the summertime. miss you and hope you are well.
xoxoxo kristina
First of all, I want to say that I think you beautifully captured the major linchpin in the mechanics of her narrative. She invites you to enter a landscape. And this landscape and its main figures may be peculiar to her vision as an author, yet she takes you along with very deliberate steps and images, that almost convince the casual reader that all is inevitable. Characters are walking on a narrow path, to their isolated destinies (destinies that "orbit" as you wrote, or maybe rub up against one another... as I write for the sexual innuendo) and then time trudging on is the force of climax and resolution...not the characters or their potential actions. So Jhumpa provides another kind of fixation...and people are just fixed (in their places and like they're neuters,... get it "fixed" like a cat.).
So Paul and Sang and Farouk, after I read this one, I remember feeling so much tenderness for Sang, she was making some really disturbing/ fucked up choices about a man, but she seemed so unhinged in all other aspects of her life (dropping out of school without a plan, seemingly drifting and a little friendless) that it was really easy to see that she would easily connect to an abuser. Farouk is strange and rigid--maybe she liked this structure even if it didn't bring her very much happiness. And, I don't mean to throw the "abuser" term around lightly, but "I've warned you, Sang...I will not spend my life with a woman who makes scenes." I almost tore a page out and ate it I was so angry... but I didn't want to make a scene.
The thing that I found so interesting in this one were the very limited options available for the male characters...you had either the distant idealizer, Paul: lonely and longingly reading literature, finding a bunch of incomplete versions of women to graft onto his romantic version of Sang. I would cut him more slack, but I really feel like his interaction with her is really so limited. And then Farouk, the dickface (for lack of a better) who rolls up in a BMW, can't stand sleeping together after sex (although, he seems to have no issue with Deirdre), and chides Sang for desiring some openness and ease in their relationship. And finally, I guess I can't leave out the army of anonymous suitors...calling her with little else but her Bengali resume to cling to for conversation. Which seems like a bit of a drain, she has to play-act good humor about this constant bombardment on the house phone. In sum, she's got a lot of bad choices... a delusional Romeo, a dickface, and then a bunch more faceless Romeos. And, she chose the dickface, ain't that just like a woman! In all seriousness, I think its quite human to choose a companion that makes you forget who you are, if all you are wanting to do is forget who you are for awhile.
A little too simplistic in my description of Jhumpa's "landscape"? Do you see more goodwill in Paul's actions than just a dreamy, grad student with a little libido?
Also, Part II: Hema and Kaushik was my favorite. I thought their story was really beautiful, and maybe the only one that dispels the fixation theory, they had a chance, didn't they!?!
I'm halfway through Travels with Herodotus, if you want to move on a blog about the aged Polack.
I'm really excited about Stuffed and Starved too, I think there will be debate, I skimmed it at a bookstore last week.
i just got back from vacation in Seattle, it was excellent, beautiful in the summertime. miss you and hope you are well.
xoxoxo kristina
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