This book gives one a quite sober look at the sexual mores of our times, and at the same time is a ridiculous romp of sexual improbability throughout This book gives one a quite sober look at the sexual mores of our times, and at the same time is a ridiculous romp of sexual improbability throughout the towns of Racine, Wisconsin, New York City, a mining town in Minnesota, somewhere in India, and Llasa, Tibet. This book is the rawest experience with sexual explicitness, I believe, one could possibly read. If one would guess which book of all books might have been banned, one would guess this one (and of course it was).
Yet the implausible scenes it gives us, strangely, to the average man, are weirdly plausible. That is why this fiction works: I know it might strike some if not most people as strange, but I truly believe that if you think about it the average man would not think it at all unreasonable that a full gynecological exam would occur in the rest room of a Greenwich Village bar, as it does in this book, or that in every single scene in which a man appears with Candy no matter what the profession of the man, whether professor, doctor, mystic or whomever, sex is the ulterior motive of all their interactions.
Candy is presented as an innocent, the original bleeding heart liberal, whose love and compassion for a hunchback on Grove Street, for example, is heartwarming but at the same time ridiculous because the guy's certifiably nuts but because of her broad loving arms and open-mindedness she cannot perceive even his inability to speak coherent English. Later, in bed, when he starts beating her with a hangar, she transforms the scene into a "just punishment" for the sins of all mankind towards the unfortunate deformed.
Terry Southern's extraordinary clever and creative, funny as hell, yet as I said there's a deep moral tale hidden behind the, well, perfect behind, often exposed in telling detail, of the heroine of this book, Miss Candy Christian....more
No, that's another of Mr. Southern's masterpieces, one I've yet to re-read after all these years. (It's on order. I speak, of"Good Grief, it's Daddy!"
No, that's another of Mr. Southern's masterpieces, one I've yet to re-read after all these years. (It's on order. I speak, of course, of "Candy.")
But nevertheless, here, the Magic Christian. It's a very rare book, in that it's virtually unique, but addresses an issue that might be on many of our minds: what totally unique and cool thing would you do with some extra billions of dollars?
Aren't we a little bored seeing how all the billionaires in our midst conduct themselves, so traditionally, so usurpingly, so without imagination? Great. Buildings. Stocks. Stores. Retail. Charity. We know. We know.
But this guy. Guy Grand. A grand guy. He's an "eccentric" billionaire. He does things so weird, so cool, well, that's what the book's about. Southern chronicles Mr. Grand's exotic adventures, from "overtipping" a hot dog salesman some $499.80 on a 20-cent hot dog purchase, to putting a million dollars in one-hundred dollar bills into a vat admixtured with 500 pounds equally of cow shit, urine and blood along with a sign "Free $ Here." What would you do? Dive in?
And he pays TV actors a million bucks to--in the middle of a dramatic scene on live primetime TV drama to suddenly look into the camera and say a line like, "I cannot go on. I will vomit if I say another word of these worthless treacle! I cannot! I must walk off!" Leaving stagehands, fellow actors, directors and big-time moneybackers horrified.
This is how Guy Grand, a grand guy, gets his chortles. He lives--when he's in town which isn't too often--with two doting aunts on the upper east side--and seems to have a great time plotting against the establishment, the status quo, and everything normal.
Hazel Motes thinks what he thinks and no one much can influence him one way or another; he hardly hears anyone else. He seems to move on his own incliHazel Motes thinks what he thinks and no one much can influence him one way or another; he hardly hears anyone else. He seems to move on his own inclinations. He arrives in a small southern town and starts preaching his "Church without Christ". He becomes obsessed with an apparently blind preacher and his daughter, and at the same time another young man, having lived in the town and working at the local zoo but who has not had any friends for the two months he's been there, becomes obsessed with Hazel, follows him around and tries to be his friend. All these people end up mixing in strange ways, except not perhaps strange to any of them. They come out of some short stories that appear late in Flannery O'Connor's career and are further developed here in this novel.
These characters, as wonderfully as they're portrayed, are never known or knowable; they're essentially mysterious, but we keep following their stories because, while they appear to be train wrecks in the making left and right, they're also human, are portrayed deeply as such, and we want to read more about them....more
It's been a few years since his last publication, I've read both David's books at least twice, and am somewhat impatiently waiting for his next. He's It's been a few years since his last publication, I've read both David's books at least twice, and am somewhat impatiently waiting for his next. He's a bright young writer of enormous talent. He takes every word--every sentence--as a great challenge. He doesn't want to be mediocre for one moment. He demands his prose is infused with--here's a word he might use--the stupendous.
Each of his characters are remarkable. On the one hand they seem absurd caricatures but on the other, many are presented as considerably more noteworthy in their inner lives--more profound, more dramatic--than the average characters we seem to see on an everyday basis, inside and outside of books.
If one theme drives all of his writing it is man's confrontation with that "great opportunity" in life--it comes to all of us at least once, he seems sure to be saying--and it's what we do with that moment that is crucial, that defines us for evermore. Even if the action we need to take at such a given moment is completely boggled, wrong, insanely misplaced, the moment calls for action, big action, and in the end the taking of it is what might well propel us to "the next level" of being that we all strive for.
I owe at least myself an explanation of why I didn't place five stars next to this book; I seem pretty liberal with that assignation. I think it's because I prefer the less absurd--although I can't really fault him for this presentation. At all....more
This is a little scary. Jim Knipfel is an amazing writer. He's written about kooky things in a weekly column (now finished) in NY Press, for several yThis is a little scary. Jim Knipfel is an amazing writer. He's written about kooky things in a weekly column (now finished) in NY Press, for several years, and the protagonist in this first novel of his is a grizzled newspaperman who works the "kook beat" for a major NY metropolitan daily. This guy's even more of a misanthrope than the real author. Or perhaps better put: unlike Jim, this fictional writer is much too much wrapped up in his off-the-wall characters. He believes or thinks too much of what they say is possible. It's more than lending an empathetic ear. To follow the crazies, the paranoids, deep into their delusional testimonies is to risk getting lost...
Jim paints an all-too-accurate picture of modern society, which is sort of in his periphery...the world of young cookie-cutter journalists, the corporate world, the world of authority, the "official" world that goes on all around him.
The only reason I didn't give five stars, which I usually do when I love a book or think the writer is fantastic, is that so deeply does Jim go into many of the characters' off-the-wall ravings that it became difficult to maintain the stamina to stick with those bizarre twisted nonsensical tales; to my perhaps too impatient soul, it became a bit tedious.
Isn't a main reason so many reviewers give less than sterling reviews a reflection of their own (our own) shortcomings as readers? I remember, especially years ago, whenever coming across a difficult or impossible-to-understand passage by what was obviously a great author, I'd tend to blame the author, for writing a "bad patch"--never myself, for just not being intelligent enough, or quiet enough, receptive enough, to read what he was saying......more
A wonderful family saga of a young Indian couple who found love in the Boston area, and through the years we follow them as their family grows, visitsA wonderful family saga of a young Indian couple who found love in the Boston area, and through the years we follow them as their family grows, visits its roots in India, and fights with the issues of cultural pulls in both directions. Haven't seen the movie, don't need to. Ms. Lahiri has written two great books, this and her short story collection, and I look forward to whatever she comes up with next! A real craftsman with a sensibility for telling beautiful tales....more
What can you say about JCO? The most prolific great novelist of our times. She's written probably over a hundred books, all illustrating her depth andWhat can you say about JCO? The most prolific great novelist of our times. She's written probably over a hundred books, all illustrating her depth and wisdom as a writer. She's taken modern icons and major headlines, from the life of Marilyn Monroe and Ted Kennedy to the race riots of the sixties, but mainly she's gone behind the scenes of peoples' private lives, to illustrate through literally hundreds of short stories and dozens of novels her breadth and scope of knowledge and attention to the most important issues, public and private, of our times.
This book stands out among the many I've read. It's a personal mystery, also a public drama, in that the story takes place around Detroit in the late sixties, where it happened Miss Oates was a teacher of literature at a night school.
I've read her books including this one a while back, so I can't recall the plot details, but I remember being quite stoked while reading it, for the personal drama between a wife and the husband with whom she was unfaithful...and of the portrait inside the mind of a crazy man with a gun...
In any event, she writes fluidly. You might think, with her astounding number of publications, some under pseudonyms (she also writes mysteries and books for young adults and children!)that her attention might flag, that she might get sloppy.
No, never. Amazing attention. A greatly trained mind. A pleasure to sit with her......more
Delicia was murdered, but no court would ever get the case. She was murdered by the indiscretions of her husband, from the wounds they caused her, andDelicia was murdered, but no court would ever get the case. She was murdered by the indiscretions of her husband, from the wounds they caused her, and due to her inability to go on with any lustre and feeling of triumph of love in her heart. So one might describe the general theme of "The Murder of Delicia," a late 19th century novel by Marie Corelli. She was a wealthy, much-heralded literary figure of her time, loved greatly by her adoring public, and wrote of serious matters that, in return for which, as a woman, she received precious little respectful comment from the "great literary critics" of her time. I refer here both to Ms. Corelli--and the lead character of this book, Delicia Vaughn whom, to anyone who knows the real author's life, knows how autobiographical this character is.
She's married to a rake, and as far-seeing and prescient is Miss Vaughn in her writing, she has a notable blind spot when it comes to seeing the true colors of her husband. Everyone else knows, for God's sake, her butler, for example, various public figures around town. It's the grist of local gossip, how her husband, Lord Caryleon, who spends only his wife's hard earned money--he's never worked and lives off his title and his good looks and charm--is seeing gallivanting around with every young promiscuous dancer, such as "La Marina," a particularly saucy number from the Empire dance hall.
Turns out, though, as fate would have it, Ms.Vaughn happens upon a jeweler in downtown London as she stopping in for no apparent reason and is shown, by the jeweler, a beautiful piece, a necklace romantically described, ordered by a "Lord Carlyeon." Now Delicia, never suspicious, after the jolt of hearing her husband's name, naturally assumes that the necklace is for her. But when she opines that it might be "for the wife" the jeweler instantly corrects her, even mentions the above-named dancer, and said, Oh absolutely it's for her. Then goes on to disparage the idea of such a man ordering for his wife!
Well she's taken way back (and soon after sees "La Marina" dancing with the said necklace glamorously adorning her chest), and over the next half of the novel suffers greatly. She's always been above the fray, not a socializer, someone who, while lionized, has always doubted the worth of fame. She's heard nasty rumors, but assumes the ethic of the rumormonger never includes truth, so she goes about--until this happenstance at the jeweler's--ignoring what's out there. And now, though, she becomes very hurt, destroyed inside, because her last rosy illusions are fading. In the modern sense, we'd assume it would be divorce next, cutting him out of her will, and then, one might hope, she'd meet a decent man and fall in love--or at least have some fun again.
But that was then, and it was a certain kind of personality this great writer possessed--not to allow for such folly, as she might have put it. No, she was made "to love only once" and now that that "one-time" had surely been destroyed, there would be no more love in her life. She would separate from the "Lord"--she could not legally divorce him because at that time while he wronged her and spent her money on such as "La Marina" he did not, by legal definition written by men, treat her with actionable "cruelty"--and go on writing and living, but without love. She even decided to forgive a leading actor of the time who had professed his love to her--but previous to the revelation at the jeweler's had, in Delicia's judgement, stepped way over the line when he intimated unfaithfulness on the part of Lord Caryleon and thus had been banned from her presence for his insult. But she told the man that she hoped he would understand--he did!--that she could never love another. He regretted it deeply, and went off to cry so desperately aware of that which would never be, but after the wool was pulled from Ms. Vaughn's eyes, at least there was a renewed "understanding" between them and, in the end, when Delicia did collapse and die (after revising her will and writing a new book that would be her "most serious" and also her greatest best-seller after her death) one of her behests was of her beautiful St. Bernhard, Spartan, to that actor.
As to her husband, she arranged with lawyers to give him "250 a year" which they'd assured her, would be enough, except of course he wouldn't be able to live as lavishly, nor adorn his young women with expensive gifts.
The thing about the husband was he always was "hurt" and "miffed" and "angry" and "furious" whenever he felt what he believed was reproach, or even evidence of independent behavior, on the part of his wife. She was wronged--he'd flaunted his extramarital activities and on top of that did so only with his wife's money (but which money she freely gave as he was her world!)--and all he could conclude from her hurt is that she had wronged him? And all he could think about was how different men and women were, how odd it was that his wife would achieve fame without the need and support of men, how much she would fail to understand the woman's place and, towards the end, how much she failed to understand the rights of man (in infidelity and a host of other self-indulgences) in contradistinction to her own.
He ended up embarrassed, not really from his own behavior, so much as in the inability of his wife to see how there really was no need to change the tenor of their relationship, just due to what are the most common acts of a modern man with modern sensibilities.
The "Murder of Delicia" was just that. Imagine the news today: "A woman was murdered tonight. Her body was found, finally released from life's troubles, by the fireplace in her well-appointed living room. Arrested was her husband of 13 years, who, according to police, had failed to respect the sanctity of their marriage and who had gallivanted around town with a young saucy model. The woman, the city coroner says, appears to have died from a "broken heart." The man protested his innocence. Prosecutors say he could get life."...more
This guy, a pretty famous writer in England, at the turn of the last century, was pretty uninspired. He wasn't a religious man--far from it--but he enThis guy, a pretty famous writer in England, at the turn of the last century, was pretty uninspired. He wasn't a religious man--far from it--but he ended up at an isolated monastery, where he was a guest during some rough weather for a night. He stood by and watched vespers. He ended up talking with the senior authority in the place, one of the monks, an austere yet cheerful man, a man very wise, who counseled this non-believing poet. The poet, while eloquently arguing against the supremacy, or even existence, of a God, nevertheless had heard of the senior monk's reputation as a mesmerizer, as someone who had long studied and could prompt some pretty severe changes of consciousness in people. He begged him for some help, while dismissing the monk's very avowal of his source of power.
Nevertheless, the protagonist had a pretty mesmerizing transformative experience, wrote during his stay the poem of his life--but still thirsted for more. It ended up he would get more than he bargained for.
In a vision he was sent to the fields of Ardath, which is referred to in the bible as a pretty desolate stretch of land (in a part of what is now Iraq) in which, while things seemed drab and uninteresting, to spend the night there would open one up to earth-shattering changes.
He ended up awaking in a very strange place, Al-Kyris, and in short order attaching himself to the Poet Laureate of this strange land, Sah-luma. Theos, our protaganist, ends up a "visitor" in a society at least 5000 years old. He's there as if in a dream, able to use his mental facilities to the fullest, but unaware of any details of a past, except that there was one. But he's never brought to think about these things except to note, in a flurry of events, how much he does not know and cannot remember, and he finds the strangest similarities--indeed, some uncanny resemblances--regarding his new poet-friend. In fact the poems Sah-luma rattles off at various official functions are the very stanzas--word-for-word--Theos himself had written--including the great one at the monastery. Strange--chilling--but completely inexplicable.
There's an extraordinarily alluring High Priestess of Al-Kyris, Lysia, who, adorned with bejeweled snakes and precious armbands, and lording over her palace full of dedicated and strange servants, is, at turns devastatingly tempting and bitterly cruel, using all her charms to try to, on the one hand, seduce Theos, and on the other,to get him to kill her alleged love, Sah-luma.
The plot is building towards the prophesied destruction of the whole city, which is ringed with a river darkening in crimson each day....more
It's a great title to me. It represents expansion, a lack of pressure, a timelessness if you will, a feeling of breeze, of wide open spaces. And in thIt's a great title to me. It represents expansion, a lack of pressure, a timelessness if you will, a feeling of breeze, of wide open spaces. And in the book--by Pearl S. Buck--the same feeling of openness, of possibilities, presents itself.
Joan Richards is just home from college. It's Middlehope, Pennsylvania in the 1920s. She has nothing on her schedule at all. She luxuriates in her bed, stretching in the early morning, eventually going downstairs to greet her family at the breakfast table: her father, the town's pastor, an "otherworldy" man entirely focused on his business, hardly noticing his family, diffident, aloof, yet not purposefully so--it's just not in his nature to commingle gaily; her mother, Mary, the rock of the family, the dutiful, gay, busy seamstress, cook, planner, family conscience; her sister, Rose, a few years younger, quiet, following more in her father's footsteps, the "religious" offspring; and Francis, her younger brother, a distant teenager whose rebellion is held in check by the overwhelmingly close bond he has with his mother.
What to do with the rest of her life? Well, Joan had nothing but time on her hands, and a lot of thinking to do.
But events would change that.
Her mother was, we soon learn, getting to be quite ill. Inoperable tumor in her stomach. But she never saw a doctor until quite late. Out there in the country, in that setting, one lived with one's problems. There was a town doctor, a straight-talking affable seen-it-all type, Dr. Crabbe, who was eventually summoned, then brought a specialist, and things soon became apparent: there wasn't much time.
The household would be sent into turmoil. Soon enough, Joan's future, as she saw it, became clear: she would step in and take over the role of Mary, of take-charge mother.
After her mother's death, things began unraveling. Not that Joan failed in her tasks, just that events kept steamrollering: her sister Rose married and went to China to become a missionary; Francis, caught up in a romantic entanglement with a local woman of color, was immediately disatched to New York to quell that mess; the father, Paul, by then a bit doddering, amidst rumors he was soon to be replaced as pastor, suddenly died of a stroke.
And all the while Joan, still young and strong, large and big-boned and full of life, carried on and bore the suffering, yet grew isolated and alone in the big house, which she eventually had to give up for the new pastor and his family.
Throughout these months of turmoil, Joan would grow quite restless. Near the end, when it was just her father and herself in the house, she would take to going out, say for a long walk in the rain, just to do something. Before all this trouble, she'd briefly steal away to meet in the woods to kiss and grope with an older man, the church organist, but that fizzled out when she realized he'd never change, he wasn't interested in any kind of real relationship.
While alone with her father, she was being visited regularly by a man she ended up marrying in her lonely desperation after all had fallen apart--a country bumpkin named Bart Pounder. He "was dumb" but decent enough. They lived at his farm with his family, an extraordinarily non-talking group who would sit around all evening, hardly saying a word, and having no values that could be considered modern or expressive in any way. It was stultifying. Joan took refuge in her expecting.
A beatiful baby was born. Joan doted on him constantly. She moved up to the attic, closed her life--physically--to her husband from that point on, and stayed constantly with baby Paul. Problem is, he "wasn't right." Turns out Dr. Crabbe--and a New York specialist--confirmed, the baby was born "witout a mind." He "did not know" his mother. He could not talk. Joan yearned for a child with whom she could communicate, but also knew her life--taking care of Paul--was quite set.
During a previous trip to New York--to visit her brother--she was introduced to the man who would help look out for him, help get him a job, etc., a Roger Bair. Joan fell for him, and when with her son she was in her deepest need, she wrote to him about what work she might do to help make ends meet. (It turned out Joan, one day upon coming home to the farm, heard a great argument in progress. Actually a fistfight was underway, between her husband his father, who'd caught her husband in the haystacks with a local whore. "If you'd done your duty by your husband, this never would have happened!" her mother-in-law exclaimed. She decided to move out then and there. She'd definitely contributed to the troubles, and just wanted to be through with them. While there was still a lot of hubbub in the kitchen, Joan went to the attic, got Paul's things, and they hit the road. She ended up at the house of a Mrs. Mack, a neighbor woman she was helping out in her own last days; upon her death, Mrs. Mack gave her house and some cash to Joan.)
Roger Bair wrote back and got Joan some work transcribing music for a New York company. They began a regular, if circumspect, communication. Her feelings for him grew, in her loneliness with Paul, she had little but time in which to have such feelings spread out.
Around this time, tragedy struck further, giving her more need of the likes of Roger. She'd received a post that her sister Rose and her husband Rob were killed in an attack on the town they were proselytizing in, somewhere in China. Their two children, David and Mary, would be brought back to Middlehope, where, Joan decided, she would be the one to take charge, to raise them. Children who would show feelings! Who would be fully alive to all possibilities! She was thrilled and overwhelmed, with mingling sorrow...
And then the shocking news that Francis, who'd finally been realizing his dreams of flying a plane, had died in a fiery crash. The circumstances? The colored whore who had tracked him down--and duly informed him that she had bore him a son--Frankie, whom by now Joan was also taking care of, because the mother, Fanny, went missing (off to find Francis)--freaked him out and he ran to the plane, threw to the side the pilot who had been intending to take it up, and flew it...onto his fiery death.
Well this was all too much to take, except that in addition to reading a little about the incident in the paper, Roger himself had appeared at her farmhouse door to break the news in person, and while she was terribly aggrieved, she couldn't help but notice his wonderful eyes, his expressive hands. "There will be time to mourn Francis. Now I will allow this indulgence..." But Roger was married, to a frail, simple woman he could not stop taking care of, and Joan--who'd dealt with frailty and understanding her whole life--could not help but understand here again. It was not to be...
The book ends, though, with Roger expressing his love to Joan...and his promise of "somehow, someway" eventually making things work out.
Joan, thrilled in her everyday parenting to such a fine brood, would live with that. The time, after all, "was noon."...more
This is the story of men who built the A-bomb in the early 40’s. she brings to life the urgency of the times—the belief among scientists, many of them This is the story of men who built the A-bomb in the early 40’s. she brings to life the urgency of the times—the belief among scientists, many of them good noble men who would never think to do mass harm, that the Nazis were fast apace putting together the ingredients to successfully create a nuclear weapon, and the consequential need to act quickly to build a bomb of our own so that we would not be held at the terrorists’ mercy—and in addition to conveying the intelligent debate and scientific knowledge within the community, Ms. Buck details the personal lives between the leading scientists and their wives, investigates everyone’s consciences, and tells a riveting story, the ending of which we all know too well. The result of the successful completion of the atomic bomb project may well have led to victory in WWII and the leg up through the ensuing decades that prevented future holocausts, but it also seems to have led to a further callousness among the generation coming to age after the war; the first generation that, perhaps, believed it really did "command the morning."
Ah, listening. Is it true we only listen when it’s virtually too late? This book brings the reader into the debate. As one reads, one can’t help but think of one’s own answers to the critical questions. Was dropping the bomb right? Would one take back that action if one could? Is saying you’re a pacifist enough? I think our national debate on all critical issues suffers because of the practice of rarely going beyond the rote answer, the knee-jerk, expected response. Are you a liberal? Then answer this way. A conservative? Then this.
I shall give my answers the best I can. Looking back, as I look back on many fateful decisions that went awry, or terribly destructively, both in my world’s historical life and in my own personal life, I see one constant: there was a lack of listening. For if there had been listening, let’s take for situations that end up leading to war, one imagines all crises could be avoided, because proper listening would leave the participants cognizant of their commonality, there would surely be no dispute worth killing for.
For example had Harry Truman agreed to let the Japanese surrender not "unconditionally" but just with some other use of language, from what I understand "face" could have been saved and the same result, i.e. an end of hostilities without the need to drop the bombwould have followed. Or had conventional weaponry been used for some more days. Satellite reports indicated devastation, Japan’s capabilities nearly vanquished…it was just a question of pride…and so many people, scientists, people who admire America all over the world, were counseling…do not do this…you—America—will be hated for ever more. It is not worth it. Explore other means.
Also one has to ask to what extent one need act to kill others so as to save one’s self. How valuable is life to have to do that?
This book, like all of Ms. Buck's is simple and eminently readable, and provocative....more
Madame Wu is the decisive hard-nosed matriarch of the well-to-do Wu family in a decent-sized Chinese town away from the main cities in the early part Madame Wu is the decisive hard-nosed matriarch of the well-to-do Wu family in a decent-sized Chinese town away from the main cities in the early part of the last century. As she approaches her 40th birthday, she decides on a radical change. She will bring in a concubine for her husband, and herself retire to separate rooms for the rest of her days. It isn't a practice her household has ever undertaken, so her family reacts pretty much against it, but she is the matriarch, she's thought out her decision well, and in the end, there's no arguing. She wants to put the things of the flesh behind her, she surely doesn't want additional children, and while she ends up having second thoughts, they're relatively minor, and that's that.
Their household is a bit forward-looking anyway. One of the sons is given permission to go abroad. Another is allowed to choose his own bride. And then, when Brother Andre enters everyone's lives, things begin to change even more radically.
He's a foreigner, a big, hulking, handsome white man from afar off. I believe it is Holland. He's a thoroughly spiritual man, and comes to teach one of the sons English, so that he'd be more impressive to his young bride who herself has picked up some English while living in another town.
The mother, Madame Wu, becomes intrigued by Andre, and they end up spending a lot of time together, as, after his lessons with the son, he sits with Madame Wu and teaches her as well. Some English, but mainly the lessons of his own life lessons. You could call his persona religious, but perhaps instead one should say "without religion" or in any event, without organized religion. He's a simple man, strong, knowledgeable, friendly, poetic. Spending all the time she does with him, Madame Wu is forced to question her own methods and beliefs, and comes to the --to her-- shocking conclusion that, with the rules and regulations she's set up in the household, she's put tradition and her own desires ahead of what is best, that is, doing nothing but granting freedom to everyone in her household. She begins loosening the binds under which everyone's been instructed.
When Brother Andre is beaten near to death, he calls for Madame Wu, who rushes to his bedside, and hears his dying words--"Take care of the children."
The orphans Brother Andre has been caring for...Madame Wu takes in...gives them a wing of her house...and they have shelter and food and a sense of family...for the rest of her days.
She senses each family member's difficulties--many of which she sees she helped bring about with her meddlesome behavior--and rectifies each matter as best she can.
Her relationship with her husband matures, even as she arranges his marriage to a young former prostitute...and as she overcomes the pettiness she's felt towards many family members over the years. She sees and lives with Brother Andre in her mind and in her heart, he's her "true love" for sure, and he is brought into her intimate thoughts on a regular basis, which helps to guide her decision-making.
Pavilion of Women is remarkably moving and real....more
The funniest laugh-out-loud many times book I ever read. I read it out loud to my son over a period of going-to-sleep times, and we just couldn't stopThe funniest laugh-out-loud many times book I ever read. I read it out loud to my son over a period of going-to-sleep times, and we just couldn't stop laughing. It's as funny as hell.
Oh, and if I need hardly say it, only the original, folks. NOT the Disney!...more
I read this book again and again. It's unique and riveting. A handsome naked young man has enormous powers, just in his touch, his glance, but of courI read this book again and again. It's unique and riveting. A handsome naked young man has enormous powers, just in his touch, his glance, but of course, given his oddness, is hardly welcomed in the community in which he is spending the time of this novel. Strange, odd, evil and confused characters surround him, some who seem to understand, others who are extraordinarily touched by his presence and actions.
It's a short book, easy to read, and an experience you won't soon forget, I reckon....more
Possibly the best novel ever, though for some years now I've given that title to Don Quixote. But finally--you know how long it can take sometimes--I Possibly the best novel ever, though for some years now I've given that title to Don Quixote. But finally--you know how long it can take sometimes--I picked up a giant classic that had been in the background of my to-read list for years, and took a month out and read it.
What can one say, really? It answers everyone's dream of having a simple story told, one of human drama, even soap-opera-ish, with events, action, drama, emotion, and so on while at the same time having such presentation with an artist's touch so that from this grist-of-the-mill boilerplate series of stories about an extended family and the societies around them, we also get profound insights into human character, and we find ourselves, while reading, thinking about how one aught act in certain bedeviling situations.
How does one behave when one's whole world is turned upside down and a close one has been found to have cheated on you? How great is your love when the one you love is pregnant, and you find yourself being pulled in different directions regarding your future commitment to her? How much understanding can or should we have to a disgraced husband who cannot quite let go but must punish his philandering spouse?
These are the kinds of questions that are superficially addressed on our afternoon talk shows and among gossips at the office or at the evening-time bars. But here you get to explore deep feelings with a master artist, who is so humble and clear-thinking that he does not have to couch his writing in anything superior. We get the real deal here.
I mention my thoughts here, though I could pick virtually any Henry book. I've read most of them, often a number of times. These books are totally uniI mention my thoughts here, though I could pick virtually any Henry book. I've read most of them, often a number of times. These books are totally unique, reveries, presentations of how man might live if he only had the notion and carried through on it. These books stand in total juxtaposition to the mind-conditioned state of society. They are free rambles, though carefully plotted and written! They discuss and elaborate on all man's ideas and dreams, crazy actions and adventures--both in real life and in the mind. Ground breaking is to say the least. God how lucky people are who've never read Henry and stumble upon a book like this. What a treat!...more
This is the only book so far I wish there were ten stars for. I agree with a writer I know who thinks this book might be the greatest novel of the 20thThis is the only book so far I wish there were ten stars for. I agree with a writer I know who thinks this book might be the greatest novel of the 20th century. I've recently read his diaries, Vol 1, I've read all his books, but the Magus, which I've read a number of times, still stands out.
It takes your whole life, if you identify with the protagonist, which I tend to do when I read, and puts it into total tumult. You don't know which way is up. Truly. You come to moments in the book where you realize: there are life-altering moments and you can well think you haven't a clue as to how to proceed.
You're taken forward. Plots untwist and drag you one way, then take you, miraculously, in another direction. It's mind-bending.
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