31 Days of Books: Frankenstein

Hello lovelies!  In honor of our Halloween Plans, NT Live's encore screenings tonight, and in keeping with the spooky ending to my 31 Days project, I am pleased to offer you my final review: 

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Title:  Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Author:  Mary Shelley

Published:  1818

Year I read it:  2011

One sentence summary:  The horrors of a student's obsession, extreme isolation, and each individual's quest for significance - Frankenstein is the ultimate story of monsters and men and meaning in an empirically demanding world.

Interesting fact: On a dark and stormy night, on the shores of Lake Geneva, Mary Godwin (later Shelley); her lover, Percy Shelley; and their friend, Lord Byron were discussing re-animation and reading German ghost stories when Byron suggested they each attempt their own "supernatural" tale.  That night, 18-year-old Mary began what we now know as Frankenstein.

Three reasons to read it:

• This text is fundamental to the cultural shift into the Modern era.  It's a novel that looks to answer things strictly empirically - and that included examining an anthropogenic creation.
• One of my favorite papers from college included a reading of this novel's stance on race, class, and gender.  It's a fascinating study!  Frankenstein creates a new breed - a Monster; the Creature examines several strata of classes, noting pointed issues with how people treat each other; and Shelley succeeds in creating a female-less dystopia by the end of the novel.  If you're interested in examining "The Other," or the oppressed, this would be a very good book to read.
• The dialogues and debates toward the middle of the book ask profound philosophical questions.  As the Creature asks questions of his twisted creator, you can almost hear the tortured author asking questions of her Creator.

One reason you maybe shouldn't:  

• For having reached such significant position on the canonical shelf, Shelley's writing is often unbearably sloppy.  The book jumps forms between epistolary, long sections, and chapters.  The sometimes 4-layered framed narrative is a fascinating technique, but isn't executed the best.  I remember reading the beginning and the diction bothering me so much, I said aloud, "You were the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft!  You were writing after Jane Austen, for goodness sake.  I know you were young, but you should be able to craft a better sentence than that!"  I still respect the book loads, but I can't forgive some of her "stylistic choices"

Great quotes:

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.” 

“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!” 

"Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!” 

“Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred."

[One of my favorite quotes on Oxford]  "The spirit of the elder days found a dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps."

"It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishments of my toils."

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.” 

31 Days of Books: Tale of Two Cities

Title:  Tale of Two Cities

Author:  Charles Dickens

Published:  1854

Year I read it:  2004, 2006

One sentence summary:  The classic novel of the French Revolution; of doppelgangers; of family devotion, betrayal, and shame; and of the relation of two cities: London and Paris.

Interesting fact:  Dickens's only historical fiction novel. 

Three reasons to read it:

• If you, like me, think Dickens is a bit heavy-handed in his symbolism and caricatures and length, etc... Let me assure you, this book is better than most.  [It's like Spielberg's Lincoln - he seems to have stepped back enough to let the characters breathe and fill the space he's created.]
• Sydney Carton.  No, I'm not just fangirling.  I may have a thing for complex, quasi-scoundrelly protagonists.  But it's not just that.  Sydney is genuinely amazing.  He's brilliant creation and he makes the rest of this story work.
• This is one of those books that you have to trust that the author is weaving a web of plots and that they will somehow connect in the end.  Dickens does a fabulous job of bringing all his threads together for a spectacular climax - no loose ends, no characters wasted. 

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• Being that it's Dickens, there are still (in my opinion) the issue of the weak-or-evil-female conundrum. 

Great quotes:

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” 

“I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.” 

"Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?""Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.”

31 Days of Books: Heart of Darkness

Title:  Heart of Darkness

Author:  Joseph Conrad

Published:  1902

Year I read it:  2010, 2011

One sentence summary:  Allegorical on so many levels, this novella relays the story of Charles Marlow's journey up the Congo river and of Kurtz, the man he meets there.

Interesting fact:  When Conrad decided to become an author, he had to choose to write in Polish (his native tongue), French, or English.  He chose English.

[Bonus fact:  Yes, this novella is the basis for Apocalypse Now.]

Three reasons to read it:

• When I was first reading this book, I wasn't enjoying it too much until at one point, I was talking to my brother, and I realized the deep intertextuality in this little novella.  My favorite is an ongoing parallel with the Aeneid, the white man stopping in Africa on the way to his own European empire - there are several specific references with the death of the helmsman, Kurtz's  African Mistress, etc.  Anway - that's just one example!
• This book offers a very interesting perspective.  Some argue that Conrad was racist and helped establish stereotypes.  While some of that may be true, he does bring to attention the many "horrors" of colonialism. 
• This is one of the best examples of framed narrative.  It's use is both masterful and significantly adds to the storytelling.  For instance, it makes the retelling of the narrative dream-like.  This is random, but I have a theory that Heart of Darkness helped inspire Inception.  Marlow compares his story to a dream multiple times - "It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream..." “We live as we dream--alone....” "I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice."  The plots of both stories turn (if you'll pardon the pun) on an idea left open-ended [the spinning top, and "the horror!"].  I will have to develop the theory more fully in another post... but I promise - it's trippy!

One reason you maybe shouldn't: 

• This is a hard book.  One of the harder ones I've read.  It's only 70 pages long, but the first time I read it, I had such a hard time making out what was going on.

Great quotes:

“And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.”  [First lines of dialogue - he's referencing London colonized by the Romans]

"No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.”

"The intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory--like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment."  [Marlow on the death of his African Helmsman] 

“the mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future”

“I think the knowledge came to him at last — only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude — and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.

"The horror!  The horror!"

By a Lady...

Pride

and 

Prejudice:

A novel.

In three volumes

***

By the 

Author of "Sense and Sensibility."

***

Facts about Pride and Prejudice - 

It went on sale as three, hard-backed volumes on January 28, 1813 - available for 18 shillings.

It was originally titled "First Impressions" and written as an epistolary novel. This draft was written in less than a year from 1796 to 1797 (age 20 to 21).

The author sold the manuscript to the publisher for £110.  Despite its instant success, this was all she ever made off it even though her publisher made ~£450 from the first two editions alone.

Austen's name was never associated with it during her lifetime.

The final title was most likely inspired from a line the last chapter of Cecilia by Fanny Burney - one of Austen's favorite female authors.

After being set to type, the original manuscript in Austen's hand was destroyed.

[Austen's writing desk]

Quotes on Austen [part 2]

Well, currently working on page 21 of my thesis... its getting there. A few more fun ones:

"...there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them… Such is the common cant.—“And what are you reading, Miss----?” “Oh! it is only a novel!” replies the young lady… “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;”  or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language." - Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, in defense of the novel

"But while Emily Brontë was as unsociable as a storm at midnight, and while Charlotte Brontë was at best like that warmer and more domestic thing, a house on fire—they do connect themselves with the calm of George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the feminine advance." - G.K. Chesterton [okay, not on Austen, but it was too funny to pass up]

"Men like Coleridge or Carlyle… had gone through furnaces of culture where even less creative people might have been inflamed to creation. Jane Austen was not inflamed or inspired or even moved to be a genius; she simply was a genius. Her fire, what there was of it, began with herself… There was nothing in her circumstances, or even in her materials, that seems obviously meant for the making of such an artist." - G.K. Chesterton, introduction to "Love and Freindship" (1922)

Something I love about old English novels--referring to couples by the man's last name and the girl's first name. A few examples:

Darcy and Elizabeth

Emma and Knightley

Rochester and Jane

even Clarissa and Lovelace

While Fitzwilliam, George, Edward, and Robert are all fetching names... I like the affectionate formality of his last name. Its kind of cute.

(Cathy and Heathcliff don't count because Heathcliff only had one name =)