Finished: The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman (Sterne). Eh, one of those farcical books that I'm not so fond of, but so many authors recommended it in their top ten books of all time! It is a unique book...I'll give it that. The author apparently was meticulous about each book being printed just right because he did such unorthodox things as including squiggly lines -----~~~~~~---- in the middle of text...and sometimes little symbol-like drawings....or the use of strings of asterisks ******** for racier dialogue. And, he even left an entire chapter out that he decided not to include, but then also left those pages out...so the book literally goes from page 240 to page 251 with no pages in between. Oh, and later towards the end of the book when the author gets to the part of the book where one of the main characters is going to have "relations" with a lady friend, he leaves the two chapters with the details of what may have happened completely blank, lol. Granted, this was written in the 1700's, so the writing tended to be more prudish. However, Sterne was just a bit too out there for me. Not to mention, his many, many tangents!! He dedicated many pages to how he'd draw the lines to how his chapters had gone thus far (hence the squiggly lines) and self-admitted the tangents with signs of several loopy-de-loops in his straight lines. He was an obvious fan of Cervantes and his Quixote. Anyway...there were a few bits of the book I enjoyed, so I was determined to read it til the end!

I loved the good-natured, and true-hearted character of Tristam's Uncle Toby. As a matter of fact most of the book was about him! Tristam, who was the narrator, and who the book was supposed to be about, didn't even make his birth appearance until the third chapter. And then...much had already been made about the fact that 1) he'd had an unfortunate conception, 2) he was going to come out head first, which his father believed would squish his brain and make him dumb, 3) his nose was crushed by the doctor's forceps, leaving him with a small nose (his father believing that a large prominent nose was necessary for success), and 4) his unfortunate name. His father had wanted him to be named Trismegistus, after a respected Greek author...however the nurse messed the name up and told the baptismal priest Tristam, his father's "least favorite name in the world". See how even my blog post is nonsensical?? That's how the entire book was. :-)

So...a couple of passages and words of wisdom I liked.

Tristam's unfortunate conception. His mother blurts out a question to his father right in the middle of baby-making:

   I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;---that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;---and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;-----Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,-----I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me. Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracts and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter. "Pray, my Dear," quoth my mother, "have you not forgotten to wind up the clock?"-------"Good G--!" cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,----"Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly questions?" Let me tell you, it was a very unseasonable question at least,---because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in hand with the Homunculus, and conducted him safe to the place destined to be his reception. 

Once Tristam was born, his father set out writing out a detailed set of instructions for his successful and healthy childhood. He was so into his work, however, by the time Tristam was three years old, no one had even read the father's advice for the first three years, so it was basically useless, lol:

   This is the best account I am determined to give of the slow progress my father made in his Tristra-paedia; at which (as I said) he was three years, and something more, indefatigably at work, and, at last, had scarce completed, by his own reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was, that I was all the time totally neglected and abandoned to my mother: and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had spent most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,---every day a page or two became of no consequence---
   ---Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

I love that last quote! :-) And, even though it was a struggle at times, I'm glad to have read the infamous Tristam Shandy!

Finished: Chasing Latitudes (MacLeod). A fun book written by my masseuse! I've known Joshua MacLeod for 11 years, and I'm so proud of him that he has two books published now. :-) His latest is how he advertises it...a "Cockamamie Caribbean Tale". Full of adventures, camaraderie, a little suspense, and some character growth amidst the adventures. I love how one of the main characters is an old World War II sea plane. In real life, Joshua loves spending time with some old vets restoring WWII war planes. That personal experience really shines through in the book. A fun read! Thanks for the signed copy, Josh!

Finished: The Things They Carried (O'Brien). Very powerful book about a writer's experience as a soldier in the Vietnam War. I can't explain how this book moved me. There are just some people who get a free pass forever, from me, and the youngsters who went over to fight for God knows what in that war are some of those people. All our military people who have defended our country or put themselves in the line of danger over in a country far from home are those people. My dear friend Leslie, who is a lady of complete grace and exuberance for life is another of those people. She lost her daughter last year after a nearly year long illness. How she gets up every day and puts one foot in front of the other and lives her life...how she still cares so much for other people, I don't know. Free pass forever. Anyway, wow, this book really brought out a lot of emotions in me. I can't even imagine the horror, uncertainty, fear, questioning, of being in a war like Vietnam. The Things They Carried is the story of one platoon of young men, and how they lived, how some died, how they handled things (or didn't) after the war, and how they became brothers and coped during the war. This is Tim O'Brien's story and he tells it so well. He didn't want to go to the Vietnam War. He was all set to go to grad school at Harvard, but he was drafted, so he went. I liked this early statement that he made in the book about how the politicians, etc., made the decision to enter this war, yet were themselves far removed from it: There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. 

This was one of those books that was hard to put down. Every word made such an impact. I hate quoting only a few passages, but here are just a few snippets taken from several pages that show just a tiny bit about The Things They Carried:

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. 

Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations.

Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. 

Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot.

Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday School in Oklahoma.

Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried 6 or 7 ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity.

Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. 

What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty. 

In addition to the three standard weapons--the M-60, M-16, and M-79--they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive. They carried catch-as-catch-can.

They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.

They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the code of conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself--Vietnam, the place, the soil---a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. 

For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic...

They were tough.

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing---these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. 

I'm once again so impressed that this was one of the books that my son read in his high school English class. I'm so impressed by his amazing teachers who insisted they read books like this! I only wish I read it sooner.

Finished: The Portrait of a Lady (James). Beautifully written, but a disappointing ending. I have been looking forward to reading another James novel since reading Washington Square, which I enjoyed, and it took me a while to settle on this one. I gave the first 30 pages of The Wings of the Dove a try and felt as if Henry James was trying to out-Joyce James Joyce in his extremely confusing, winding, prose in that book. I settled on The Portrait of a Lady, and I'm certainly not disappointed in the beautiful writing. I think James is wonderful when he's more direct. I love the deep descriptions of the characters, their motivations, and their feelings. Their dialogues are also natural and witty when called for. His descriptions of each location also take the reader directly to that spot...especially if you've been there, like I have to Florence, Rome, and London. It was nice to "go back there" again. :-)

However, I'm truly disappointed in the ending of the book. After spending 600 pages wanting the heroine, Isabel Archer, to finally realize the mistake she made in her marriage to Gilbert Osmond, instead the ending is very confusing and ambiguous. I can't tell if Isabel ran back to Rome to be with the unloving Osmond, or if she went back to Rome to confront Osmond and end her marriage, or if her friend Henrietta was lying and she didn't go back at all. And that kiss with Caspar?? What the heck was that? I wanted so much for Isabel to realize that she truly loved Lord Warburton, not Caspar!! It was heartbreaking when Isabel turned down the marriage proposal of Lord Warbutron, but she was right to do so at the time because they had just met and she still wanted to experience the world. It wasn't so heartbreaking (to me) when she turned down Caspar's proposal in America, before traveling to Europe, because again, she was young and wanted to experience the world. Caspar chased her all over the world, though, and until the end, still pressured her. Lord Warburton, though he persisted a bit in the beginning, loved her more from afar...but still loved her, I'm pretty sure. He was always right there, willing to pick the pieces if only she had let him. What's more...I'm more than certain that she loved him all those years as well. Alas, a very disappointing ending.

And...of course...a disappointing middle, when Isabel actually gave up her directive against marriage so young and ended up marrying the deceitful Gilbert Osmond, who married her only for her money! I wanted so much to love the character of Isabel Archer, and I did at first. But, when she threw everything away to marry Gilbert and then to stay in the loveless marriage because it was her obligation to live out whatever plight she'd gotten herself into, then her character deteriorated. She lost her spark, her ingenuity, her spirit for adventure, and her spirit as a character. I did love her cousin Ralph Touchett. He was a young, interesting man who spent the entire novel dying of consumption. He adored Isabel and insisted his father leave half of his fortune to Isabel when his father died so that Isabel could travel the world as she desired and take in all the experiences she could. Giving her the wealth, however, is what attracted the lecherous Gilbert Osmond (and his equally deceptive friend Madame Merle) to the unsuspecting Isabel. Soon, Ralph regretted his decision since the wealth had the opposite affect of what he intended, trapping Isabel in a controlling, prison-like marriage. The scene between Ralph and Isabel towards the end of the book, on Ralph's deathbed was heartbreaking, but I hoped it would finally open Isabel's eyes that she needed to escape her marriage and find happiness with Lord Warburton. Then...blah....the dumb, ambiguous ending. Sigh. Oh well, I'll just have to imagine what I felt happened. I guess everyone can't write a Jane Austen ending. :-)

A few of my favorite phrases:

   Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the teat or not--some people of course never do,--the situation is in itself delightful. 

When Isabel first meets Lord Warburton and wants to stay in the room and chat with him and her cousin Ralph without Ralph's mother being the room. Mrs. Touchett finds this inappropriate and lets the innocent Isabel know this. I love Isabel's answer at the end:

   "Of course you're vexed at my interfering with you," said Mrs. Touchett.
   Isabel considered. "I'm not vexed, but I'm surprised--and a good deal mystified. Wasn't it proper I should remain in the drawing room?"
   "Not in the least. Young girls here---in decent houses--don't sit alone with gentlemen late at night."
   "You were very right to tell me then," said Isabel. "I don't understand it, but I'm very glad to know it."
   "I shall always tell you," her aunt answered, "whenever I see you taking what seems to me too much liberty."
   "Pray do; but I don't say I shall always think your remonstrance just."
   "Very likely not. You're too fond of your own ways."
   "Yes, I think I'm very fond of them. But I always want to know the things one shouldn't do."
   "So as to do them?" asked her aunt.
   "So as to choose," said Isabel.

When Isabel is first introduced to Gilbert Osmond by Madame Merle, Madame Merle wants so much for Isabel to impress him. Isabel is aware of this fact, and bristles at the idea. I wish she'd kept this independence and spunk throughout the book!

   There was something in the visitor that checked her and held her in suspense--made it more important she should get an impression of him than that she should produce one herself. Besides, she had little skill in producing an impression which she knew to be expected: nothing could be happier, in general, than to seem dazzling, but she had a perverse unwillingness to glitter by arrangement.

Finished: A Fable (Faulkner). Another complicated, exhausting, amazing Faulkner book. A Fable won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Of course, that didn't make it any easier to read. Like any of the Faulkner books I've read, the sentences were so complicated, and so long, and the thoughts so comprehensive and prone to excruciatingly long tangents that you can never, I mean never, let your mind wander to something simple like "oh, did I remember to take the chicken out to thaw?" No sir, you cannot do that and keep understanding what you're reading, lol. Anyway, this was not my favorite of the Faulkner books, but I'm so, so glad I read it. There were many profound statements and actions in the soul of this book, about several different participants in World War I.

   'One regiment,' the runner said. 'One French regiment. Only a fool would look on war as a condition; it's too expensive. War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of war is to end the war. We've known that for six thousand years. The trouble was, it took us six thousand years to learn how to do it. For six thousand years we labored under the delusion that the only way to stop a war was to get together more regiments and battalions than the enemy could, or vice versa, and hurl them upon each other until one lot was destroyed and, the one having nothing left to fight with, the other could stop fighting. We were wrong, because yesterday morning, by simply declining to make an attack, one single French regiment stopped us all.'

There were two basic stories for me. One...what happens when one division of an army ,who has been fighting in the trenches of the World War I front line for four years, decides to disobey the command to attack the enemy AND the enemy decides not to fire either? What happens is a peace of a few days, and even the wary belief of the soldiers that pulled off the act that just maybe they ended the war. What happens when the bigwigs don't like their defiance is atrocious.

Two...who is the mysterious corporal, with his twelve fellow (and following) soldiers, who somehow manages to get the word to over 3000 men to carry out this plan...is he the second coming of Christ? Is he Christ come back to give us one more chance to listen to him for peace instead of war? If so, his plan doesn't work. The bigwig generals on both sides don't like the fact that the men have caused such a pause in the war. There are too many grander things at stake in the game of world domination, politics, etc. to let the mere fighting and dying soldiers decide to make the war stop.

So, of course, the corporal is executed. Not, however, before one of his twelve betrays him to the big generals. And, not before one of his twelve denies him three times. This correlation between the corporal and Christ is what this book is known for, and it's a fascinating read. Still, very complicated though! Sometimes I wasn't even sure which character was thinking or talking without going a few pages back to see if I missed something. The conversation between the corporal and the general in charge of all the allied forces was so mesmerizing...largely due to the fact that we find out the general is, in fact, the corporal's biological father. The general tries to get the corporal to leave town before he has to execute him, but then he'd be abandoning his twelve (now eleven minus the traitor) men. More so, he'd be abandoning the cause. Of course, the corporal refuses, and the father ends up sacrificing the life of his son....hmmm.

The depths of many characters are explored, but sadly not really the depth of the corporal. Two much time is spent on this huge tangent back in the United States with a horse thief and his preacher friend who end up in the war. Their back story is wayyyy too long. Anyway, I continue to be so impressed with Faulkner, even if he does get a little too verbose for my tastes. It's really hard to criticize someone who could write so brilliantly otherwise. There are books dedicated to studying Faulkner's writing and one essay in particular I read after trying to decipher the ending of the book. I really liked the statement this one essay made which was about another major character, the Runner:

The Sentry is killed, and the Runner barely survives, losing half of his body in the process, but it is enough for him to return at the end of the novel to reiterate one final time, at the Old General’s funeral ten years after the Armistice, what it means to stand up for one’s convictions. He represents the third member of what Faulkner termed a “trinity of conscience,” who as a group represent three ways of reacting to the horrors and injustices of war: by nihilism, passivity, or action. The runner, Faulkner says, is a “living scar, who in the last scene says, ‘That’s right; tremble. I’m not going to die—never.’ i.e., there is evil in the world and I’m going to do something about it” (Essays 271). Even though the Runner failed in his attempt to end the war, what matters is that he not only tried, he continues to try even ten years later.

I know a book has made a huge impact on me when I take the time to then go and research the author's deeper meaning. :-) Overall...4 out of 4 for Faulkner so far! My favorite still being The Sound and the Fury.

Finished: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Wilder). A book that goes straight to the heart. A thought-provoking look at why any given person dies on any given day. Is there a grand plan of God's? Does He really get so absorbed in the details of who lives and who dies? Is He punishing people? Or, is it just His will? Or does everyone just have their predestined time to die no matter how they've lived their lives? I've never looked into reading The Bride of San Luis Rey because, frankly, the title led me to believe it was probably some war novel. Not until I took the time to read a synopsis did I decide it would be worth reading...and it's a Pulitzer Prize winner to boot.

It is the story, set in 1714, of five random people in Peru who perish when an ancient suspension bridge, woven of osier by the Incas, snaps and collapses over a huge ravine in the Andes one day. A Franciscan monk, Brother Juniper, witnesses the event first hand, as he had been about to cross the bridge himself. He became determined to figure out why these people perished...was it God's plan?

    Brother Juniper stopped to wipe his forehead and to gaze up on the screen of snowy peaks in the distances, then into the gorge below him filled with the dark plumage of green trees and green birds and traversed by its ladder of osier....At all events he felt at peace. Then his glance fell upon the bridge, and at that moment a twanging noise filled the air, as when the string of some musical instrument snaps in a disused room, and he saw the bridge divide and fling five gesticulating ants into the valley below.
   Anyone else would have said to himself with secret joy: "Within ten minutes myself...!" But it was another thought that visited Brother Juniper: "Why did this happen to those five?" If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. And on that instant Brother Juniper made the resolve to inquire into the secret lives of those five persons, that moment falling through the air, and to surprise the reason of their taking off.

So then we are treated to chapters about each of the victims, and meet some colorful, sympathetic, and not-so-sympathetic people. They all end up being connected to each other via a couple of different people. I wanted to know more of each of their stories! In the end, the Abbess, who had been personally close to two of the victims, says to herself at the large funeral service:

   "Even now," she thought, "almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

Very simple words, but very profound.

Finished: The Eternal Husband (Dostoevsky). A good story! I haven't read Dostoevsky since The Brother's Karamazov, so I was glad to read another of his good, albeit shorter, stories. The Eternal Husband is the story of a man who runs into the friend whose wife he had an affair with years before, and all that ensues upon discovering that the wife is dead and that there is a little girl who was born 8 months after the lover was asked to leave by the wife....dun dun dunnnn. There is sadness involved, and lots of drama. And, of course, there are a couple of well-placed surprises tossed in. I do love how the title is explained by Dostoevsky:

   She was faithful to her lover, but only as long as he did not bore her. She was fond of tormenting her lover, but she liked making up for it too. She was of a passionate, cruel and sensual type. She hated depravity and condemned it with exaggerated severity and--was herself depraved. No sort of fact could have made her recognize her own depravity....She is one of those women who is born to be unfaithful wives. Such women never become old maids; it's a law of their nature to be married to that end. The husband is the first lover, but never till after the wedding. No one gets married more adroitly and easily than this type of woman. For her first infidelity the husband is always to blame. And it is all accompanied by the most perfect sincerity: to the end they feel themselves absolutely right and, of course, entirely innocent.
   Velchaninov was convinced that there really was such a type of woman; but, on the other hand, he was also convinced that there was a type of husband corresponding to that woman, whose sole vocation was to correspond with that feminine type. To his mind, the essence of such a husband lay in his being, so to say, "the eternal husband" or rather in being, all his life, a husband and nothing more. Such a man is born and grows up only to be a husband, and, having married, is promptly transformed into a supplement of his wife, even when he happens to have unmistakable character of his own. the chief sign of such a husband is a certain decoration. He can no more escape wearing horns than the sun can help shining; he is not only unaware of the fact, but is bound by the very laws of his nature to be unaware of it. 

I think my next Dostoevsky will be Crime and Punishment! But I'm not ready to read it yet. :-)

Finished: Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf). A lovely book that eavesdropped on the innermost thoughts of all the characters. I really enjoyed it! I was skeptical about reading another Virginia Woolf book after what was, to me, a complete nightmare of incoherent stream of conscious babble in To The Lighthouse. Mrs. Dalloway was stream of consciousness as well, but in such a different way. The reader is let in on every thought and every word uttered by the characters in the one given day that Mrs. Dalloway is giving a party. They may be saying something on the outside to someone, but you're reading both what they're saying AND what they're feeling! It's rambling, and detailed, and gut-wrenchingly honest! Characters intertwine either intimately or by chance, yet still have great affects on each other. Knowing the insecurities and longings and terrors and misgivings and hopes and delights of each one of them as they take you through their thoughts you can see so much of yourself in different ways. I mean...whose mind just sits there and doesn't constantly think things all them time? Anyway, it's hard to explain, but I did enjoy the book. I'm not sure yet if I'll include any snippets because I don't even know where I'd cut one thought off from another as the words in the book roll on and on. I did particularly love Mrs. Dalloway's old first love, Peter, coming back after 30 years and them still both having such feelings of mixed emotion. They took you back to their youth as if it was yesterday. Anyway, I can now see why Virginia Woolf is so highly regarded! :-)

Finished: East of Eden (Steinbeck). Loved this book! A classic in literature and a classic for me. :-) An epic book spanning three generations of two families, centering around the biblical story of Cain and Abel. One family was based on John Steinbeck's own family. His grandfather was represented by Samuel Hamilton, who was a kind, good, honest, generous soul, but a very poor farmer. He raised nine children, including Steinbeck's own mother, Olive. Samuel is a wise and good friend to all, especially the rich Adam Trask who descends upon the Salinas Valley with his new wife. We get to know many of Samuel's children in the book, as well as his wife, Liza. Samuel is instrumental in Adam's life later down the road.

Adam and his brother Charles are the sons of no-nonsense army man, Cyrus Trask. Raised strictly on a successful farm in Connecticut, Charles feels like his father loves Adam more, and so sets out to win his love, failing every step of the way. As a teenager, he takes his disappointment out on his brother, Adam, nearly beating him to death. Adam, honest to a fault, always loves his brother but is afraid of him. He is forced to join the army by his father, and spends many years away from the family farm. Charles is made to stay home and tend to the farm. After Cyrus dies, Adam comes back and runs the farm with Charles, but even though they love each other as brothers do, they always end up arguing. Eventually Adam moves across the country to California to start his own life, and has his own children, fraternal twin boys Caleb and Aron. Of course, Adam has married a heartless, psychopath (no really, she sets fire to her house and kills her parents when she's a teenager because she doesn't get her way), and she leaves Adam and the babies the minute they are born and goes off to become a prostitute. She ends up slowly killing the current madame of a "well run" brothel, inherits the brothel from her, and turns it into a sick and torturous brothel.

Adam is in a fog for years, leaving the boys to be raised by his Chinese man-servant, and friend, Lee. By the time Adam snaps out of it, the boys are 11, but then he becomes a real father to them...well, as real as he can be. He always kind of lives in his own fog, but he's always well-intentioned. He never wants the boys to know, though, that their mother is alive and left them. He lets them think she's dead. Caleb is the darker, brooding, more complicated of the brothers. He finds out early on that his mother is still alive and feels like he's got all the evilness from her welling up inside of him. He knows that everyone automatically loves the fair-haired, blue-eyed Aron. Aron doesn't have to work to make people love him like Cal does. Cal wants his father's love more than anything. (Which he has but doesn't realize.) When the boys are 17, their father loses alot of money on a risky business venture. The boys are made fun of at school. To escape the ridicule, Aron works hard to take his exams and make it into college early. He lives his life in this perfect little bubble where he has everything planned out. He'll always think his mother was a saint who died. He'll always think his girlfriend, Abra, is perfect. And, he thinks his life should go a set way. He's actually very self-centered. Cal, on the other hand, decides to help his father by earning back the money he lost. He gets with the savvy town business man and together they make a profit off the farmers who are renting Adam's huge farm by offering them a certain price for crops, and then being able to sell those crops for six times the amount when WWI starts up. Cal is excited to present his father with the $15,000 profit he has earned, and decides to do it at Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, Aron gets to college and hates it. He comes home for Thanksgiving and is going to tell his father that he wants to quit college. All he wants to do is live on their family farm, marry Abra, and be a farmer. When Cal presents the money to his father, his father devastates him by saying he can't accept money that has been earned by taking advantage of farmers who worked so hard, even though it was a completely honest venture. Furthermore, why can't Cal give him a gift more like Aron and be trying to do something to better himself? Cal gets so angry that he takes the sensitive Aron (who he has always protected up til now despite his feelings of jealousy) to see that his mother is, in fact, alive...and is not at all virtuous. The equally devastated Aron then runs off and enlists in the army. And, of course, Aron is killed in the war. Cal feels terrible guilt and feels responsible for Aron's death. Adam has a stroke and is near death. Abra falls for Cal since she realized she'd never be the perfect woman Aron made her out to be. Lee, in all his wisdom, always brings everyone back to an even keel. He drags Cal in to see his father, and begs Adam to let Cal know that Aron's death isn't his fault. Adam struggles mightily and utters the word, Timshel. This is his way of giving Caleb his blessing that he does not blame Cal for Aron's death; he is not inherently evil but has the free will to make his own choices, rise above things and be good.

Timshel stems from a conversation that Adam, Lee and Samuel Hamilton had many years before when the three men got into a discussion of Cain and Abel. Timshel is simply the idea that God blesses Cain with the free will to overcome sin by his own choice, rather than demanding him to. This translates to Caleb understanding that he has a choice to overcome the evil he feels inside...that he isn't evil because it's in his genetics from his mother. He has Timshel, and can let the good conquer the bad thoughts that rise up in him. This is how I interpreted it, anyway. :-)

I loved this book! The story flowed along, and yet Steinbeck makes some of the most vivid, wonderful descriptions of scenery as well. He has just the right amount of history and sermonizing...not too much. He has rich, complicated characters that you love or love to hate. Mostly, he made my heart break for Cal, even though Cal did some rotten things in his anger! I loved Lee and his natural wisdom. And Lee loved the boys and Adam as his own family. I loved Samuel Hamilton and when he realized he was getting too old to keep farming, it wasn't exactly that he gave up on life, but he just knew his time was coming. Every character he touched missed him terribly when he was gone...some even reeling out of control. I'd love a whole separate book that digs deeper into some of his children's lives, but I don't know that it's out there. It took me half the book to realize that the author, the grandson named John, was actually John Steinbeck. Duh! :-)

Here are some favorite passages. Who doesn't feel this way when they realize their father is becoming old and frail and may not live forever? Samuel Hamilton's children and their spouses get together to talk about convincing Samuel to retire from the farm:

   They all wanted to say the same thing--all ten of them. Samuel was an old man. It was a startling discovery as the sudden seeing of a ghost. Somehow they had not believed it could happen. They drank their whisky and talked softly of the new thought. 
   His shoulders--did you see how they slump? And there's no spring in his step.
   His toes drag a little, but it's not that--it's in his eyes. His eyes are old.
   He never would go to bed until last.
   Did you notice he forgot what he was saying right in the middle of a story?
   It's his skin told me. It's gone wrinkled, and the backs of his hands have turned transparent.
   He favors his right leg.
   Yes, but that's the one the horse broke.
   I know, but he never favored it before.
   They said these things in outrage. This can't happen, they were saying. Father, can't be an old man. Samuel is young as the dawn--the perpetual dawn.
   He might get old as midday maybe, but sweet God! the evening cannot come, and the night? Sweet God, no!
   It was natural that their minds leaped on and recoiled, and they would not speak of that, but their minds said, There can't be any world without Samuel.
   How could we think about anything without knowing what he thought about it?
   What would the spring be like, or Christmas, or rain? There couldn't be a Christmas. 

Samuel and Lee talk after Samuel has come out to say his goodbye's to Adam and Lee. He's going to take his children up on their offers and take time off to visit them all. During the conversation, Samuel finally shakes Adam out of his perpetual fog by telling him that he knows where Cathy is and what has become of her. Up until this time, Adam doesn't know his wife left him and became a prostitute. This action, though it might seem initially cruel of Samuel, is necessary because it finally makes Adam wake up and start living his life. This is the big change that happens in Adam when his boys are eleven. Anyway...this is part of Samuel's and Lee's conversation afterwards:

   Lee said, "Mr. Hamilton, you're going away and you're not coming back. You do not intend to live very much longer."
   "That's true, Lee. How did you know?"
   "There's death all around you. It shines from you."
   "I didn't know anyone could see it," Samuel said. "You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only--and that note unchanging sorrow. I'm not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat."
   Lee said, "Maybe everyone is too rich. I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair."
   "It was your two-word retranslation, Lee---'Thou mayest.' It took me by the throat and shook me. And when the dizziness was over, a path was open, new and bright. And my life which is ending seems to be going on to an ending wonderful. And my music has a new last melody like a bird song in the night."
   Lee was peering at him through the darkness. "That's what it did to those old men of my family."
   " 'Thou mayest rule over sin,' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles--only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness. 'Thou mayest, Thou mayest!' What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strata of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before. Do you see now why I told Adam tonight? I exercised the choice. Maybe I was wrong, but by telling him I also forced him to live or get off the pot. What is that word, Lee?"
   "Timshel," said Lee. "Will you stop the cart?"
   "You'll have a long walk back."
   Lee climbed down. "Samuel!" he said.
   "Here am I." The old man chuckled. "Liza hates for me to say that."
   "Samuel, you've gone beyond me."
   "It's time, Lee."
   "Good-by, Samuel," Lee said, and he walked hurriedly back along the road. He heard the iron tires of the cart grinding on the road. He turned and looked after it, and on the slope he saw old Samuel against the sky, his white hair shining with starlight. 

When World War I started, many of the young men of Salinas went to war; and many parents in Salinas received the dreaded telegram:

   There is no dignity in death in battle. Mostly that is a splashing about of human meat and fluid, and the result is filthy, but there is a great and almost sweet dignity in the sorrow, the helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope--I hope he didn't suffer--and what a forlorn and last-choice hope that is. And it is true that there were some people who, when their sorrow was beginning to lose its savor, gently edged it toward pride and felt increasingly important because of their loss. Some of these even made a good thing of it after the war was over. That is only natural, to make money out of war. No one blamed a man for that, but it was expected that he should invest a part of his loot in war bonds. We thought we invented all of it in Salinas, even the sorrow.

Finished: The Magic Mountain (Mann) I liked this book...but I really wanted to LOVE this book! So many authors include it on their lists of the top ten books ever. This book, along with Buddenbrooks, helped Thomas Mann win the Nobel Prize for literature. I really wanted to love this book. I think the problem is that I loved the story, but once again, as in other books, there was just too much time spent going off on several-page tangents of deep philosophical discussions about everything from religion, to war, to mysticism, to humanism, etc. And, two characters were specifically, and very obviously, created and given huge roles in the book for just this purpose. At first I liked Settembrini and his taking the fatherless main character, Hans, under his wing and trying to guide the young man in life's big questions. However, when they threw the character of Naptha in as his conversational nemesis, the philosophizing rapidly deteriorated for me. I glazed over many of their conversations. First of all, I'm not stupid so I don't need to be hit over the head so blatantly with their opposite viewpoints on every subject known to man. Second, their debates really took away from the story for me. Every time Hans and his friends visited these two, I knew that instead of fresh story to move along the plot, I was just going to get the same old arguments. Sadly, the arguments escalated into Naptha's irrational anger challenging Settembrini to a duel, ending in tragedy. I'm sure that this intellectual writing is a large reason that other authors and the Nobel committee consider this book such a masterpiece. I think the story itself could have stood on it's own, with a very reduced amount of lesson-learning philosophy thrown in for good measure.

The story itself is about 23 year old Hans Castorp, a young German man, in the years just prior to World War I, who has finished University with a degree in engineering. He is all set to begin an internship at a ship-building company. Before buckling down and starting work, he's off to take a 3-week visit with his cousin, Joachim, who has been in a sanatorium in the alps for several months trying to battle tuberculosis. Once there, Hans becomes accustomed to their way of life on the mountain and it begins to feel like home. He comes down with a cold right at the end of the three weeks and the doctor determines he may have had a weakness in his lung since childhood and suggests a several month stay. Hans stays for 7 years! Through those years he witnesses life and death, falls in love, educates himself on medical issues, learns about life from the aforementioned Settembrini and Naptha, and most of all, spends time with his cousin. Joachim, however, has only ever wanted to serve in the military and can't wait to leave and get back to normal life....so much so that he leaves prematurely (after 15 months) before he is well. Though he gets to serve in his beloved military for less than a year, he ends up back at the sanatorium and has a heart-breaking decline in health and eventual death. Hans, even though it becomes clear he's not really sick, won't leave the sanatorium even to attend Joachim's funeral back home. He's completely safe and happy in this little world he has come to know. Not until he's gone through many experiences does one event finally jolt him back into the need to go back and face reality...the outbreak of World War I. Though Hans could never understand Joachim's huge desire to be in the military and serve his country, it ironically ends up being Hans who goes to participate in the war. The last scene of the book shows Hans in an intense battle and leaves his eventual outcome in the war up in the air. That is a HUGE oversimplification of the plot, but that's the gist. I really did like both Hans and Joachim...but again...didn't LOVE them. I'm glad to have read the book, though, and been enriched just a little bit more by these two and their sanatorium "family".

A few writing snippets that I really liked. Throughout the book a big theme is time and how it is measured, not by the clock, but more spiritually. At the beginning of the book, when Hans sets off on his two-day journey to the sanatorium, I like how Mann describes the affects that space away from every day life has on a person. I knew and felt exactly what he meant....because I experience that exact feeling every two years when we arrive in the fresh mountain air of Oregon. It's a hard feeling to put into words, but he did it:

Two days of travel separate this young man (and young he is, with few firm roots in life) from his everyday world, especially from what he called his duties, interests, worries, and prospects--separate him far more than he had dreamed possible as he rode to the station in a hansom cab. Space, as it rolls and tumbles away between him and his native soil, proves to have powers normally ascribed only to time; from hour to hour, space brings about changes very like those time produces, yet surpassing them in certain ways. Space, like time, gives birth to forgetfulness, but does so by removing an individual from all relationships and placing him in a free and pristine state--indeed, in but a moment it can turn a pedant and philistine into something like a vagabond. Time, they say, is water from the river Lethe, but alien air is a similar drink; and if its effects are less profound, it works all the more quickly.

Yes, that Oregon air makes me a vagabond. :-)

When Joachim has come back to the sanatorium, the doctor has told him that he should be good to return to the military by October. This is the goal that everyone keeps in their minds, but most of them know in their hearts he will not make that goal for leaving, if he ever gets to leave at all:

   The October deadline passed quietly. No one mentioned it--not the director and not the cousins to one another; they simply ignored it in silence with downcast eyes. To judge from what the X-ray plate showed and what Behrens dictated to his psychoanalytic aide-de-camp during Joachim's monthly checkup, it was only too clear that there could be no question of departure, unless it was fraudulent, because this time it was a matter of Joachim's remaining on duty up here with iron self-discipline, until he had been made fully weatherproof--only then could he fulfill his oath by service in the flatlands.
   This was the watchword, with which everyone pretended to be in silent agreement. The truth was, however, that no one was quite certain whether anyone else believed this watchword in the depths of his soul; and because of their doubts the cousins would turn their downcast eyes away--but only after their eyes had first met. 

Joachim's death from tuberculosis reminded me so much of my brother laying there in the hospital, completely ravaged by the medical atrocities of AIDS. Up until the day he died, he would never discuss the hopelessness. He always talked about the next new breakthrough that he hoped to try when he got out of the hospital.

For there could be no mistaking two obvious facts: first, Joachim was approaching death with his mind clear; and second, he did so contentedly and at peace with himself. Only in his last week, at the end of November, after the weakness in his heart had become noticeable, were there times when his mind would wander and he would suddenly grow confused about his condition and speak hopefully and happily of a speedy return to his regiment and of taking part in the grand maneuvers that he obviously thought were still under way. It was at this same period, however, that Director Behrens stopped holding out any hopes whatever and told the family it was only a question of hours.

And finally, when Hans tries to convince Settembrini that a duel is a huge, unnecessary mistake because of a mere disagreement about beliefs that led to an insult, Settembrini replies:

Whoever is unable to stand up for an ideal with his person, his arm, his blood, is unworthy of that ideal, and no matter how intellectual one may become, what matters is that one remains a man.

There are so many more really good passages, but they are so long! I do believe I will read Mann's Buddenbrooks as well. :-)