About a month ago I finished Great Expectations, a project
that took about 20 years. I can’t say
how many times I have picked up this book and put it down again without progressing very far. Actually, the honest truth is, I would simply see the book
on my shelf and feel its disapproval with me for not reading. Waiting. Mocking.
Pitying.
But joy! Finally, I began the book, dragging my feet a bit
at the beginning, until at last I began to feel a kinship with Pip and Joe and an interest in their well-being. Once
Pip went away to London, I was spending more and more time in the bathroom
catching up on his comings and goings and becoming attached to his friends. Dear Mr. Wemmick, Mr. Jaeger’s clerk, and his
Aged P. Poor Mr. Pocket and Matthew.
It wasn’t the plot that kept me returning. That Miss Havisham
was not Pip’s benefactress was always obvious, as was the link with the
criminal Mr. Magwitch from the Moors, although I didn’t guess his connection to
Estella. The characters are all so much more eccentric than modern characters,
although I have to admit they seem familiar – several of them resemble some
people I know in some way or another. But really it was Dickens’ language that
I couldn’t get enough of. So rich, so
varied - especially after reading contemporary fiction lately. I felt the same
way after rereading “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne again for my
literature class. Yes, you have to go back and reread a few passages to make
sure you properly followed all the turns of phrase. And sometimes it seems like
being more direct would be beneficial to the flow of the story. But the imagery
and vocabulary are so much more vivid than most of the short stories we read
for class. It’s like the difference between European chocolate and Hershey’s.
Hershey’s is good, but no match.
My edition of the book included two alternate endings, along
with a biography of Dickens that seemed to suggest he preferred the ending in
which Estella and Pip remain estranged. I have to admit that I preferred that
ending myself. It seemed more natural, like Pip’s punishment for his
superiority towards Magwitch and Estella’s for her inability to empathize and
love, although in a story where all the plots and relationships tie up in a
pretty neat little circle, perhaps the ending that sold better – the one with
Pip and Estella reunited – is the way to go. Maybe Estella and Pip are humbled
for their mistakes and able to love each other for who they are.
*******
Speaking of contemporary fiction, I also finished Clare
Vanderpool’s Moon Over Manifest, a newer young adult book – came out in 2010
and won a Newberry medal. I had to make
my 10 year old daughter read it, and she didn’t love it, (She’s was on a Percy
Jackson jag, but I’m thrilled to report that she finally finished Anne of Green
Gables and is started on Anne of Avonlea. This makes me joyful!) but I enjoyed
reading this story of a young girl growing up in the 1930’s. Abilene’s father
is seeking work, and after riding the rails with Abilene for some time, he ends
up sending her to live in a small town in Kansas where he once spent some time
as a teenager. He leaves her in the care of a preacher named Shady, which gave
me the creeps a little bit because I’ve been through the Virtus training for
child safety. A pre-teen girl living
alone with an old man who is no near relation? Fortunately, nothing
inappropriate happens – turns out Shady is ministering to hobos and lets
Abilene wander where she will. Abilene gets to know the people of the town,
including the gypsy-like Miss Sadie who tells her stories about two teen boys,
Jinx and Ned. Abilene figures out that Jinx is her dad, and in the meantime she
unites the town by asking them to share their memories.
It’s an engaging story and since it is told in flashbacks to
1917, it acts as historical fiction about both the Depression and the Great
War. It’s not a story that is destined
to win hearts and become a favorite of hundreds of young girls, I predict,
because it just doesn’t have enough heft. Abilene is spunky and curious, but
she doesn’t do much but listen. A
valuable talent, but not one that inspires emulation.
****
Also blazed through another Alexander McCall Smith book
about Precious Ramotswe to keep up with my father-in-law, but I never got
around to finishing Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It wasn’t that I didn’t
like it; it just couldn’t compete with all the other stuff I had to read for
class before it’s due date arrived. I have been dipping in and out of several
books I found at the library, just before they instituted a 25 book limit per
sponsor. (I’d be more compliant with the rule if it seemed like there was a
rush on books, but typically the only people at the library are a few young
sailors on the computers. People check
out the mysteries and romances pretty regularly, and story time draws a modest
crowd, but most days the library on base is pretty quiet. You’d think they didn’t want the books to be
read. And in fact I was disheartened to
see them boxing up a bunch of the old books that hadn’t been checked out in
more than 5 years. I asked if they would be for sale, but the girl didn’t know.
Since the librarian was let go to save money, no one who works in the library
seems to know much of anything. But my
frustration is probably another instance of spinning wheels in a mud
puddle. Since people come and go here so
quickly, change happens quickly on this micro-scale, and prodigiously slowly on
the macro-side.)
******
Although heavier than Chabon’s book, V. S. Naipaul’s A Way
in the World is the other book I finished.
Not really a novel, more of a collection of anecdotes that relate to
each other because they all have something to do with Trinidad, but they don’t
always connect. Naipaul is from
Trinidad, and this book is broken into chapters focusing on individuals who either
were from Trinidad or somehow were connected to it by colonization or
revolution, including explorers Walter Raleigh and Francisco Miranda, another
character who is a writer like V. S. Naipaul, and two revolutionaries, the
older one Lebrun and the other Blair. The book travels back and forth through
time and space – to Trinidad, Venezuela, Spain, England, Africa. I almost gave it up, but again, like the
Dickens, it was the language that kept me reading. Some haunting passages: “Perhaps
below all the accidental things about people – birth, character, geography,
history – there was something truer. That was what I had always felt about
myself. Perhaps all men, if they were given a wise and rational liberty, became
worthy of Plato’s republic.”
The book is mostly a meditation on Trinidad, a place that
Naipaul considers home, but to which he rarely returns. It is also an
interesting look at colonization – its beginnings and its effects, which
particularly interests me because we are in the position of being colonists right
now. It’s an odd book, not one to rave
about, but also not one to dismiss.
Although slower and without plot like Chabon’s book, it had greater
complexity and personal interest.
********
After moseying along, I at last finished Moonwalking With
Einstein, Joshua Foer’s account of learning to train his memory and his success
at the US Memory Championships. Basically, the message is you can train your
mind to remember, but it takes practice and skill. The art is in learning to
create a “memory palace” – a mental image into which you can position all the
information you want to remember. Like I suspected, Foer finds that improving
your memory is about improving what you notice.
Pay attention, in other words.
*********
And finally, my guilty pleasure: Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.
My youngest son just bought Cabin Fever with some of his lawnmowing money.
When these books first came out, I was skeptical, if not downright suspicious,
of potential potty humor and other forms of degenerate jabs. All those drawings
of Greg Heffley in his underwear, for pete’s sake! But these things are downright funny. I love them. I can’t laughing – not a little giggle, but a
guffaw - outloud when I read them. Even
though Greg can be mean to Rowley, Rodrick is scary, and Manny is a brat, the
Heffley family isn’t broken like so many families in kids’ books – they even go
to church regularly.
The newest book in the series will be out soon. Greg Heffley in his underwear won’t be so
funny when he’s in 9th grade, so I assume the series will have to
end soon before he graduates from middle school. Cabin Fever just covers
Christmas break, and my older boys were joking that the new book probably only
covers a week or a day, so that Jeff Kinney can eke all the money he can out of
the series before Greg gets too old to be funny. The books are still making me laugh at any
rate.
