our blog is so lonely

i'm so sad.  

I nominate

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx because I have it sitting on my bedside table right now and because it won a Pulitzer.

verdict on the Poisonwood Bible?

To me it seems that everyone is okay with reading it but might rather go with something else. Any ideas???
If no other suggestions are made by the end of this week (Saturday the 18th of June) I say I will make the executive blog admin decision that we read the Bible. The poisonwood one.

Let me jump in.

Hey. I finally finished this book a few days late of everyone else. I really loved this book! I do agree with Austin that Steinbeck obviously infuses many of his diverse characters with his life philosophy, especially Sam Hamilton and Lee, but I am a sucker for that kind unrealistic optimism found in both of them. Sam Hamilton's character seems a little idealistic, especially when he describes his choice between being a mediocre man and a great one (Sam chose mediocrity) and the similar struggle his son Tom is going through, predicting Tom will choose greatness. How does Sam know his son is destined for greatness? Anyways, that was only a small sticking point. I basically just loved the characters Sam and Lee and I don' know how we have gotten this far without talking about them.

I love Lee because he is a tireless man who deeply cares for those around him. Lee's stability and predictability also render my highest regards. Although Lee's character and actions do not provide the excitement, plot twists, or deep soul searching that give books punch, I love Lee because he gives me something safe to hold onto throughout the ups and downs. Lee represents wisdom and responsibility. He holds the family together through many calamities; Cathy's shoot and run, Adam's lettuce fiasco, Aron's death and Adam's stroke. But Lee isn't the hard, determined character of Liza who similarly works hard to keep her household running. He's extremely gentle and a little new to this whole deal of raising a family, but does it very well in his eccentric way. I had to laugh when Lee threatened to fight Aron after Aron refuses to tell his father about his test scores. Steinbeck created the perfect protagonist in Lee and I just ate it up.

I will never forget Sam Hamilton either for many of the same reasons used to describe Lee. I think Lee and Sam are very obvious protagonists, or "good people"; they are the only people that scare Cathy, the epitome of evil, but through them some of the novels best themes and questions come out. Lee is the one who brings up the whole dispute over the word timshel and Sam stoutly defends the belief that people create themselves rather than inherit good or evil from their breeding. Favorite quote from Sam and Lee (they are discussing the twins chances of being good or evil after Cathy left them):
Lee: "You can't make a racehorse out of a pig."
Sam: "No, but you can make a very fast pig."
Hahahaha.
I can't remember who was saying this, I think it was Austin, but one reason we love characters is because we relate to them. Sam Hamilton reminds me a lot of my dad--another reason for me to adore him. I feel like sometime in the book Sam was described with a beard, which my dad sported all my childhood until last year. Also, Sam and my dad are both very philosophical, well-read, intelligent, if at times a little impractical, and dearly love their children (most dads do). In fact, I think the whole Sam and Liza relationship describes by parents nearly perfectly. It's quite funny. Sam is dreamy, jolly and bookish while Liza is practical, in control, and unstoppable. Sam playfully banters with Liza, calling her a "smidgen of a wife" (my mother is actually quite short), and Liza, having no time for such frivolities when there is work to be done, sharply says, "Samuel, please go out of my kitchen." But despite Liza's retort at times, you know Sam and Liza really love each other. I can't describe my parents any better way.

My comments on this book are focused very tightly on two characters because I'm writing this post rather late in the reading and Austin and Ali did a great job discussing broader themes and overviews of this book. I just wanted to put my two cents in. Really enjoyed this book, it's all I've been thinking about for a few days.

So what is the next book? Jesus is the Christ? Poisonwood Bible? I would rather not read Poisonwood Bible again, but I say since we all are choosing a book, if Jordan wants it, then I'll read it.

Is Carla still living?

O yeah...and this is plagarized

The book certainly has ambition to spare. Steinbeck wrote it as a partly autobiographical retelling of the Book of Genesis, and the book's central concern is with the pitting of good versus evil, both between individuals and within the human heart. After inheriting a fortune from his father, Adam Trask leaves behind an awkward relationship with his brother and heads west to the Salinas Valley in northern California to set up a farm. Adam's an upstanding type, if a little obtuse, particularly as a judge of character. His new bride Cathy is a wicked ex-prostitute but no one sent Adam the memo. “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents,” Steinbeck writes in the novel. “Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places…And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?” That's Cathy, and according to some accounts, Steinbeck based the character on an ex-wife. Yow.

Cathy gives birth to a pair of twin boys but she's not one for domesticity, and she abandons her newborns and her home to go work at a whorehouse again, but not before shooting Adam in the shoulder. Adam survives, but he's still entranced by his wife and for the rest of the novel, he and his sons try to come to terms with Cathy's raw evil.

If Cathy seems like a bit of a cardboard cutout, she is. But the story is written in mythic proportions so it's forgivable. What's not is that every single character has that feeling of stiffness, as if they're only puppets for Steinbeck's big, yet very little, ideas on the meaning of life. One sideline figure, Lee, is a Chinese immigrant working as a servant for Adam and his sons. When Lee first enters the book, he delivers lines like, “Me talkee Chinese talk.” But soon enough, we learn that he's more literate in his English than anyone in the family, and he starts spouting pseudo-Confucian platitudes on every page.

In fact, throughout the entire book, there's a strange background noise, as if you can hear the gears in Steinbeck's head turning and straining, trying to indoctrinate you into his world view, which he waits until page 411 to throttle you with. But by then, you've already seen this coming and it feels less like revelation than an uninteresting journal entry copied and pasted into a novel:

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. … There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”

And that's the Oprah moment. The payoff. Suddenly, Steinbeck is the spiritual guru who shows up for a few episodes and soon has a spin-off show of his own. And his lesson to us today is that we always have a choice to do good or evil, and that it's up to us to take responsibility for those decisions. It's a tidy enough statement, and it could have been its own article in the Oprah magazine (which is sprinkled this month with other wise one-liners from big names like Emily Dickinson, Emerson, and Oprah's “new friend Salma Hayak”).

East of Eden, interestingly enough, was panned by critics when it was published more than 50 years ago, but loved by the public which bought it in droves and made it a number-one bestseller. And even though Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, his reputation is still under dispute among those who debate these things (Slate's Chris Suellentrop wrote an instructive piece this summer on the topic). But don't think Oprah doesn't know all of this. “There are some who would argue that this is not really a `classic,'” she said in an interview this summer. “And I realized that that was a conversation that would come up over and over again. I just want to read great books without it becoming controversial.”

But East of Eden isn't a great read, and that's a shame because there is no shortage of classics that have been better-received and that can consume your every waking (and usually sleeping) minute they're so good. And you certainly don't need a special pass, like a degree in English, to appreciate them. The trouble with rubber-stamping a mediocre novel a “classic,” particularly when the audience is the uninitiated sort, is that it doesn't leave much room for readers to make independent critical judgments. To Oprah's credit, she finds room in the new book club section of her website to acknowledge East of Eden's uneasy status among critics. But there's also an area online called “Write a book review,” a kind of glorified online discussion board, in which a brave few have admitted to not liking the novel as much as they had hoped, only to be berated by other readers who instruct them to be more patient if they want to “get” the book and uncover all its hidden layers.

Along with the Oprah seal that's printed on the book's wraparound label, there should be a disclaimer that says it's okay to not find some deeper meaning in the text or to not fill your copy with marginalia on all the biblical allusions. If widespread smarter reading is the goal, we don't want a mass of people trying to draw blood from stones. Oprah's on the right track: she's sensitive to people's apprehension of heavy books you only read in school, and she's pitching her voice at all the right soothing tones. She might want to give her fans a little more credit, though, and next time feed them something that really cracks the world of literature open for them, not because it's “like a movie” or has sex in it, but because it's too masterful to do anything else.

Now that, to borrow a word from the Oprah parlance, would be empowering.

idea

hey hey, i was just letting everyone know that i will be reading Jesus the Christ this week, so if anyone wants to join me they are more than welcome.