Suggested Reading, 2000-01
Here are the best books I read during the 2000-01 academic year.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)
My top pick on the year, I sat down on the front porch one Saturday afternoon last summer to start reading it, and put it down finished much later that night - and this book is not short. It really has nothing to do with Robert Jordan's mission to destroy a bridge, which serves as an excuse to make a journey through the Spanish Civil War in all its twisted idealistic horror. The descriptions of the war and its effects on people represent the most powerful sections of this work, dwarfing the fairly forgettable romance between Jordan and Maria. Also interesting was the portrayal of the unforgettable characters - from Jordan to Pablo and Pilar to El Sordo and even that Fascist lieutenant near the end - as they seek to achieve some sort of surreal heroism in this world of fractured causes and fragmented alliances. And the title says exactly who it's aimed at...
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe)
This book made me wish I were back in an English class, because after reading it I had this ovepowering need to discuss it with someone. The third book in Achebe's Africa trilogy, its protagonist is Okonkwo's grandson Obi, who studied in England and returned to get a job with the colonial administration. Through Obi's relations with his father and a woman whose name I'm actually stuck on remembering, Achebe illustrates the breakdown of the traditional kinship and community networks under the pressure of European values, leaving everyone in a strange moral netherworld in which they are "no longer at ease." It is in this netherworld that the moral economy of money and power replaces that of community, leading to Obi's fall in a bribery scandal as discussed in the first chapter. In this novel, Achebe tackles other issues like colonialism and the formation of prejudice much more head-on than in Things Fall Apart, and it also puts a new spin on the murder of Ikemefuna representing the worldview of its new lead character.
The History of the Siege of Lisbon (Jose Saramago)
I had a lot of fun reading this book, but then how could I not with the story of Raymundo Silva, a copy editor who decides to change a "Yes" to a "No" in a book on the Second Crusade and finds true love as a result? I did find parts of it a little contrived, and they must have hired Star Trek: Voyager's preview people to do the cover jacket, but there's some marvelous discussion in here about the relationship among history, life, and literature - if history is life, as Silva suggests, then are we not alive? But if it is story, as his later actions seem to suggest, then can we not make our own stories for our own lives? Fans of Saramago will also find his standard worldview of essentially nameless, storyless people performing mechanically under the direction of distant, all-powerful corporate forces, the sense of distance between people, and the idea that it is only by acting randomly to break the routine that we can truly find meaning in life.
Shakuntala (Kalidasa)
This is one of those works everyone talks about but nobody reads, and since I talk about it all the time I decided to actually read it. The play by India's greatest poet and dramatist adapts a story from the Mahabharata about a girl named Shakuntala who falls in love with a king named Dushyanta, who gives her a special ring. Unfortunately, somebody curses them so that Dushyanta will only recognize his beloved by her ring which is lost in a river. Fortunately the ring is caught by a fisherman, and everyone lives happily ever after. According to the little bit of information I've checked out, Sanskrit drama features works governed by one emotion or spirit, which is commented on through a different emotion/spirit in each successive act. Here the dominant love theme is maintained brilliantly, yielding the best poetic love story I've read since Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
Like the Shakuntala, this is another work I read just to check out the action, and I came away finding it not underrated. Sam Spade is appropriately hard-boiled, Bridget O'Shaughnessy is as femme fatale as advertised, the secretary nags a lot, the villains are all villainous, and there's a nice if not 100% unexpected twist at the end. As a student of the Crusades, I was glad to see that Hammett at least knew enough to put the Hospitallers on Malta instead of the Templars. A good read for a balmy summer evening, this cultural landmark both entertains and leads an important genre of American fiction.
Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata)
In quiz bowl, I used to complain that all questions involving the plot of Kawabata works sounded the same. After reading a fair sampling of them, I've figured out why: They are all the same. But I've finally figured out you're not supposed to get the meaning from the plot, but from the ordering of images, like a series of haiku images strung together as a commentary on the events described. Kawabata's plots all involve an older man seeking purity in a beautiful young woman, which in this case takes place in the hot springs area of the west. Upon reflection, I really don't understand the book - I only figured out what I was supposed to be looking for when I got frustrated and read something on Japanese literature to figure out what the point was. But this was definitely good, the clear masterwork of Japan's first Nobel laureate in literature.
The New Africa (Robert Press)
Despite being a journalist, Robert Press writes with keen insight and vividly detailed depth about the current state of affairs in Africa. The origins of this work lie in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which Press witnessed and credits with changing his life. His experiences there - which he describes unforgettably - alerted him to the ways in which the portrayal of Africa as a "dark continent" filled with interminable ancient enmities and unfallible corruption contributed to the situation by causing people to belittle African conflicts and tragedies. So he set about chronicling positive change in Africa in a number of arenas - successful economic growth programs in Kenya, a popular uprising in Mali, and many others. While not denying the problems of this region of the world, he shows in a highly accessible and personal way the reasons why the world shouldn't forget Africa and brings to life places and experiences even most educated Americans know about only vaguely.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway)
My top pick on the year, I sat down on the front porch one Saturday afternoon last summer to start reading it, and put it down finished much later that night - and this book is not short. It really has nothing to do with Robert Jordan's mission to destroy a bridge, which serves as an excuse to make a journey through the Spanish Civil War in all its twisted idealistic horror. The descriptions of the war and its effects on people represent the most powerful sections of this work, dwarfing the fairly forgettable romance between Jordan and Maria. Also interesting was the portrayal of the unforgettable characters - from Jordan to Pablo and Pilar to El Sordo and even that Fascist lieutenant near the end - as they seek to achieve some sort of surreal heroism in this world of fractured causes and fragmented alliances. And the title says exactly who it's aimed at...
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe)
This book made me wish I were back in an English class, because after reading it I had this ovepowering need to discuss it with someone. The third book in Achebe's Africa trilogy, its protagonist is Okonkwo's grandson Obi, who studied in England and returned to get a job with the colonial administration. Through Obi's relations with his father and a woman whose name I'm actually stuck on remembering, Achebe illustrates the breakdown of the traditional kinship and community networks under the pressure of European values, leaving everyone in a strange moral netherworld in which they are "no longer at ease." It is in this netherworld that the moral economy of money and power replaces that of community, leading to Obi's fall in a bribery scandal as discussed in the first chapter. In this novel, Achebe tackles other issues like colonialism and the formation of prejudice much more head-on than in Things Fall Apart, and it also puts a new spin on the murder of Ikemefuna representing the worldview of its new lead character.
The History of the Siege of Lisbon (Jose Saramago)
I had a lot of fun reading this book, but then how could I not with the story of Raymundo Silva, a copy editor who decides to change a "Yes" to a "No" in a book on the Second Crusade and finds true love as a result? I did find parts of it a little contrived, and they must have hired Star Trek: Voyager's preview people to do the cover jacket, but there's some marvelous discussion in here about the relationship among history, life, and literature - if history is life, as Silva suggests, then are we not alive? But if it is story, as his later actions seem to suggest, then can we not make our own stories for our own lives? Fans of Saramago will also find his standard worldview of essentially nameless, storyless people performing mechanically under the direction of distant, all-powerful corporate forces, the sense of distance between people, and the idea that it is only by acting randomly to break the routine that we can truly find meaning in life.
Shakuntala (Kalidasa)
This is one of those works everyone talks about but nobody reads, and since I talk about it all the time I decided to actually read it. The play by India's greatest poet and dramatist adapts a story from the Mahabharata about a girl named Shakuntala who falls in love with a king named Dushyanta, who gives her a special ring. Unfortunately, somebody curses them so that Dushyanta will only recognize his beloved by her ring which is lost in a river. Fortunately the ring is caught by a fisherman, and everyone lives happily ever after. According to the little bit of information I've checked out, Sanskrit drama features works governed by one emotion or spirit, which is commented on through a different emotion/spirit in each successive act. Here the dominant love theme is maintained brilliantly, yielding the best poetic love story I've read since Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
Like the Shakuntala, this is another work I read just to check out the action, and I came away finding it not underrated. Sam Spade is appropriately hard-boiled, Bridget O'Shaughnessy is as femme fatale as advertised, the secretary nags a lot, the villains are all villainous, and there's a nice if not 100% unexpected twist at the end. As a student of the Crusades, I was glad to see that Hammett at least knew enough to put the Hospitallers on Malta instead of the Templars. A good read for a balmy summer evening, this cultural landmark both entertains and leads an important genre of American fiction.
Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata)
In quiz bowl, I used to complain that all questions involving the plot of Kawabata works sounded the same. After reading a fair sampling of them, I've figured out why: They are all the same. But I've finally figured out you're not supposed to get the meaning from the plot, but from the ordering of images, like a series of haiku images strung together as a commentary on the events described. Kawabata's plots all involve an older man seeking purity in a beautiful young woman, which in this case takes place in the hot springs area of the west. Upon reflection, I really don't understand the book - I only figured out what I was supposed to be looking for when I got frustrated and read something on Japanese literature to figure out what the point was. But this was definitely good, the clear masterwork of Japan's first Nobel laureate in literature.
The New Africa (Robert Press)
Despite being a journalist, Robert Press writes with keen insight and vividly detailed depth about the current state of affairs in Africa. The origins of this work lie in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which Press witnessed and credits with changing his life. His experiences there - which he describes unforgettably - alerted him to the ways in which the portrayal of Africa as a "dark continent" filled with interminable ancient enmities and unfallible corruption contributed to the situation by causing people to belittle African conflicts and tragedies. So he set about chronicling positive change in Africa in a number of arenas - successful economic growth programs in Kenya, a popular uprising in Mali, and many others. While not denying the problems of this region of the world, he shows in a highly accessible and personal way the reasons why the world shouldn't forget Africa and brings to life places and experiences even most educated Americans know about only vaguely.
Labels: Literature
posted by Brian Ulrich at
4:42 PM
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