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spaceisavacuum 's review for:
Collected Stories
by Shirley Hazzard
challenging
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I’m getting to be in a faze that’s becoming harder and harder to please me. I live a cold and cerebral life, I’m paid for my work in free time and not in dollars, and there’s plenty of it. Plenty of free time, and most of the time I jump on the opportunity to help someone, and at other times I don’t want to be disturbed, for instance when I’m about to finish reading a novel, or when I’m in the middle of a movie, and I’ve learned to sit back and let time fly, pencil me in for a 3:00 O’Clock, wait a few hours for me to finish up. Then I try the Cardinal rule: treat others as I would have them treat me. But they don't treat me, they treat me not at all; Well, for that matter, we’re living in a vacuum, and it’s full of visual pollution and auditory pollutants, and bureaucratic policies make little sense to me, and I don’t let myself get brainwashed by hyper-reactionary paparazzi stories about what our celebrity Puzo president is doing, and it wouldn’t make a difference thinking about it, and I still choose to like the things that ppl don’t, and don’t like what ppl do, because I don’t like being told what’s what Or being told what to believe or what not to believe, I don’t believe in following the status quo. In a sense, that’s what Shirley Hazzard conveys when I read between the lines… this bit of shuffling papers, filing cabinets and paper clips, what a tub of lard this motor oscillates around.. paper, oh, paper not worth reading, paper not worth printing or signing, so just put that back in the waste bin and send me a phone call.
“But they chose to forget that their whole system of logic could be overturned by the gesture of a woman or a child, or by a single line of poetry. This business of reasoning, she reflected, was all very well, within reason, but if one had nothing to be passionate about one might as well be dead.”
Shirley shares the idiosyncrasies of her characters by the use of language, some of them are linguists, and some stories are set in Italy, particularly one in Milan, but though these people have been well-traveled and well-read, they’ve met with emptiness under the surface of it. Like the meat of thought of mind is a taut coil, with compression and tension the coil tightens, and loose and affable has no meaning at all, but this happiness in lack of meaning, this joy of being unimpeded by the affectation of others, believing what others say and not questioning or interpreting. The questioning makes me sad, bitter, and disdainful of the collective diaspora, because in my search for it I find the dissolution of reasoning like .. like an empty coil, that only I am keeping it moving, and the rest could care less about fraying away at it until terminably, everything is lost, but there was no stability in it, and then no sense in questioning it, because the honest answer was dissolution. Everything disappeared and nothing remained, not even the value we placed on things, means nothing, or the value we placed on our lives, only meant as much as they placed on ours..
“But they chose to forget that their whole system of logic could be overturned by the gesture of a woman or a child, or by a single line of poetry. This business of reasoning, she reflected, was all very well, within reason, but if one had nothing to be passionate about one might as well be dead.”
Shirley shares the idiosyncrasies of her characters by the use of language, some of them are linguists, and some stories are set in Italy, particularly one in Milan, but though these people have been well-traveled and well-read, they’ve met with emptiness under the surface of it. Like the meat of thought of mind is a taut coil, with compression and tension the coil tightens, and loose and affable has no meaning at all, but this happiness in lack of meaning, this joy of being unimpeded by the affectation of others, believing what others say and not questioning or interpreting. The questioning makes me sad, bitter, and disdainful of the collective diaspora, because in my search for it I find the dissolution of reasoning like .. like an empty coil, that only I am keeping it moving, and the rest could care less about fraying away at it until terminably, everything is lost, but there was no stability in it, and then no sense in questioning it, because the honest answer was dissolution. Everything disappeared and nothing remained, not even the value we placed on things, means nothing, or the value we placed on our lives, only meant as much as they placed on ours..