I love the sumptuous imagery in this book. The narrator, Nick Carraway, seems slightly ill at ease in the fantastically rich world he moves in, and describes it as a highly coloured dream or a hallucination. For instance, on coming into a room where two young women are sitting;

They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and flutering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.

The wealth, particularly of his neighbor Jay Gatsby, is piled up in dazzling similes; champagne in glasses bigger than finger bowls, not only a band for his party but a whole orchestra, an astonishing car that he can drive as he pleases, producing a Christmas card from the local head of police when stopped.

The getting of things is integral to romance. Tom Buchanan’s crude mistress is the first to make this clear;

‘My dear,’ she cried, ‘I’m going to give you this dress as soon as I’m through with it. I’ve got to get another one tomorrow. I’m going to make a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A massage and a wave, and a collar for the dog, and one of those cute little ash-trays where you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s grave that’ll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won’t forget all the things I got to do’

Tom’s wife, Daisy, is less obvious but equally seduced by ‘things’. When she visits Gatsby’s house for the first time she is delighted with the luxury, and overcome when it is laid out in front of her as Gatsby tosses shirt after shirt before his guests, of all kinds and colours.

Suddenly, with a strained sound, Dasiy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such – such beautiful shirts before”

As it turns out, it is Gatsby who is the most entranced by money and beauty, and it is he who is hurt the most of all. Gatsby, risen from nothing, embodiment of the American Dream, is brought down by his belief that the dream can be real.

To listen to some Jazz while you read, go to WFUV and listen to their archives of The Big Broadcast, a weekly Jazz show that specializes in the ’20s and ’30s.

Apparently this book is number eighteen on the most often banned books recently. It’s violent, with sexual, physical and emotional abuse and the main character has a lesbian love affair, which I suspect is what pushes it over the edge for most people who want it banned.

I didn’t know that when I read it – having vague memories that Oprah Winfrey had been in a movie of the book at some time, I assumed it was a pretty tame read. I got a shock reading of the hard life of the protagonist Celie, but my abiding feeling was of absorbtion in the book. The characters are beautifully done. Walker writes using their vernacular, quite different from the way I have ever heard anyone speak so that added to the creation of the world she writes about. And the women are strong, fascinating people who are the prime movers and the focus of the book – the men are not exactly mere plot devices, but they certainly play a secondary role.

The ending is a happy one – an unrealistically happy one, I suppose. But I didn’t care, since I’d half fallen in love with Celie and I wanted her to be happy.

Whitman had an audacious idea – that his poetry would unite a nation on the brink of civil war. So his poetry is big, like a symphony, full of ideas and momentum. He aims to be the poet of all, and his Song of Myself is crammed with observations of all types of people, science, philosophical ideas and natural observations. It is a wonderful poem, and several sections I read over and over. It is wonderful to think of him writing for the future and all nations so confidently – he must have seemed a fool at first, but here I am, an Australian in Japan, swept away by his poems.

He doesn’t speak for all, though. He mentions women, for example, but his ideas about them are symbolic rather than as varied and realistic as his portayals of men and the world of men. The same goes for slaves, and immigrants. I’m not sure that any one could have understood such disperate groups as intimately as he wants to imply. His method of observation was against him as well – he loved to wander the streets of New York, take the public transport and hang around in bars. Places filled with men of all sorts, but he doesn’t spend hours in a department store, or taking tea. He rarely visits his own home, and he doesn’t seem to visit those of others often – so he has little input on what happens there. His world is a healthy, outdoor mix of urban bustle and bucolic splendour. He doesn’t mention life indoors often, nor how nature can be frightening or dangerous.

A documentary on Walt Whitman by PBS can be found here.

This book is a collection of articles written by John Steinbeck, from 1936 to 1966. It is interesting to watch the development of the author. Steinbeck’s style doesn’t seem to change that much. He writes in fairly short yet descriptive sentences, and likes to focus on details rather than on grand sweeping scenes, and on the ordinary person. Even when he writes of extraordinary people he is more interested in their non-public personas. He is interested in money; he was young during the Depression, and started out with no money at all. Even when he is rich, he always has an eye for those without. He is rarely without a woman, and seems to get through them in quick succession, although he never really talks much about them. He gives more details about his children – two sons. It seems there was a rift; maybe not a serious one, but a growing apart – but the introduction doesn’t give details and the articles don’t elaborate. When Steinbeck talks of his life, it is mostly of the public side, that anyone at a party with him or eavesdropping in a cafe could find out, never of what happens behind closed doors, with the exception of an innocuous, innocent piece about his sons when they went camping.

Steinbeck always wanted to be a writer, and a good one. It is fortunate that he was good, because he never doubted his ability, even when he was poor.

He can’t resist moralizing, when it comes to politics. I don’t doubt that his opinions were informed ones, and true and strongly held, but he was definitely the type of man who liked a soap box. Again, it is fortunate that he was a well known writer, otherwise perhaps he would have become a crashing bore. I suppose, though, that the impact of reading his powerful piece on The Trial of Arthur Miller would have had greater impact at the time than reading it fifty years later, when no one cares about communism any more, sandwiched between a biting piece about race relations and another defending the behaviour of America in Korea.

He’s quite a hawk, Steinbeck – it kind of surprised me, since (by modern standards) he’s generally on the bleeding heart liberal side of the scale. He even supported Vietnam, although his wife says that he changed his mind after visiting, but was too ill to write of his new views. He died shortly after his visit, in 1968. He loves war machines – actually, it seems that he just liked machines, and the army always gets the best toys. To give an example: the article I’m reading now (Puff, the Magic Dragon) states in astonishment that this oddly named aircraft can ’spray out 2,800 rounds a minute – that’s right, 2,800. In one quarter-turn, these guns fine-tooth an area bigger than a football field and so completely that not even a tuft of crabgrass would remain alive.’ He goes on to give further details of these wondrous weapons – not because he loved killing – whenever killing comes up he abhors it – but because they are just so cool.

Steinbeck is a powerful writer, and reading of events and even every day life of the America of the past from his perspective is fascinating. But you’re not supposed to read short articles one after another. The author starts to seem trite, and his words repeat. In a book, the author controls the experience and can keep the interest, but articles are things to glance at and move on from and don’t always benefit from such sustained attention. Fortunately, the topics change.

The best is saved until last – a series of articles writen for a book of photography, called America and Americans. If you’re looking for analysis of what America is then this is the place. Beautifully written with insights that seem fresh and pertinent today, and pertinent beyond America.

This is a literary book, and Irving doesn’t let you forget it. As if the foreshadowing and the motifs were not enough, the main character studies Harvey and becomes an English teacher, giving plenty of opportunity to give small lectures on other literary devices. It is also a book about writing; what its role can be, what authors should consider and how difficult it can be. Faith is another topic, as various characters wrestle with, or a defined by, their faith: faith in God and faith in others. And it’s a book about the past, and how it shapes the present.

The story, when you look back on it, is simple enough. Two boys grow up together in a small New England town, and become men at the time of the Vietnam war. Although the story is told twenty years after the last events, to the narrator nothing much ever happened after then. The way the story is told, you can almost believe him. The two boys, their families and the neighbours all have the vivid, slightly unreal characteristics of childhood memories, and Irving makes every day occurrences have the same weight as childood puts on them. Or perhaps, as the narrator believes, perhaps this truly is an extraordinary childhood, spent with an extraordinary friend.

Throughout the book, especially as the children grow, are comments on America – its role, its characteristics, what it should and could be. I especially liked the comparison to Marilyn Munroe: “SHE WAS JUST LIKE OUR WHOLE COUNTRY — NOT QUITE YOUNG ANYMORE, BUT NOT OLD EITHER; A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, LOOKING FOR SOMETHING — I THINK SHE WANTED TO BE GOOD.” The all caps are because Owen, the narrator’s best friend, has an unusual voice, shown in the book through the unusual type.

After the events in the novel, the narrator moves to Canada, where he cannot stop thinking about America – especially American politics – and never really fits in in his new country. It’s an interesting twist, but I’m not really sure why this was done. I suppose it strikes me because I am moving to a new country and I could see how you could end up always looking back, seeing the past as more real than the present in a country that isn’t your own – even though the narrator takes out citizenship. Sometimes things that aren’t in your home country don’t really count – to make that step, to believe that your new world is as vital as your old one – is tantamount to saying that you’ll probably never go back. I suppose its the difference between seeing your new community as permanent, people with whom you want to build a long term trust, or temporary if even after years you don’t care deep down what others think.

Some interesting literary criticism on the Messiah motif can be found here.