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aegagrus's reviews
72 reviews
C.L.R. James: A Political Biography by Kent Worcester
3.25
Though titled A Political Biography, this is more accurately an intellectual biography. Worcester's project is almost bibliographical; James' prolific writing is continually present and liberally quoted. This approach yields a nuanced sketch of James' eclectic and creative way of making sense of the world. Often, his ideas seem timely. He was a Pan-Africanist, but a staunch defender of the Western canon. He believed in the working class' spontaneous and creative power to birth whole constellations of interconnected social movements, but was never fully aligned with the New Left. He became a post-Trotskyist, but never a post-Marxist. He was a humanist and an individualist, but never abandoned the prospect of mass mobilization. He had a lot to say about the worlds of art, music, film, and sport, but never saw himself among the "critics". The resonances with our own time are plentiful and provocative.
Cleaving so well to the primary source material, Worcester manages to avoid eulogizing his subject. He is explicit about what he sees as the defects of James' work. He is clear-eyed about James' lack of influence or audience at various points, from the Johnson-Forest tendency to his foray into Trinidadian politics. He leaves us a clear account of why C.L.R. James matters without succumbing to the biographer's temptation for overstatement.
While this editorial balance makes for a good reference book of James' written legacy, it does not always make for a good biography. Worcester is often cursory about the non-written social context of the various epochs of James' life. He eschews not only hagiography, but the project of presenting a human narrative altogether. An arc does emerge, through the recurrent and evolving themes of James' writings, but Worcester does not always string things together in the way he might. The biography's structure, heavily indebted to intellectual history, is simple but not always clear. We do not always get a great sense of C.L.R. James the man, and the aspects of his life which do not fit as neatly into the main body of his thought are sometimes given short shrift. We are told, for instance, about how he saw cricket in social and political terms. We are told less about what the cricket pitch, in and of itself, meant to him.
Despite its gaps, Worcester's biography accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish with efficiency, nuance, and clarity. This is an excellent resource for someone trying to understand the life and thought of C.L.R. James, though not a self-sufficient resource.
Cleaving so well to the primary source material, Worcester manages to avoid eulogizing his subject. He is explicit about what he sees as the defects of James' work. He is clear-eyed about James' lack of influence or audience at various points, from the Johnson-Forest tendency to his foray into Trinidadian politics. He leaves us a clear account of why C.L.R. James matters without succumbing to the biographer's temptation for overstatement.
While this editorial balance makes for a good reference book of James' written legacy, it does not always make for a good biography. Worcester is often cursory about the non-written social context of the various epochs of James' life. He eschews not only hagiography, but the project of presenting a human narrative altogether. An arc does emerge, through the recurrent and evolving themes of James' writings, but Worcester does not always string things together in the way he might. The biography's structure, heavily indebted to intellectual history, is simple but not always clear. We do not always get a great sense of C.L.R. James the man, and the aspects of his life which do not fit as neatly into the main body of his thought are sometimes given short shrift. We are told, for instance, about how he saw cricket in social and political terms. We are told less about what the cricket pitch, in and of itself, meant to him.
Despite its gaps, Worcester's biography accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish with efficiency, nuance, and clarity. This is an excellent resource for someone trying to understand the life and thought of C.L.R. James, though not a self-sufficient resource.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Slavery, and Colonisation
The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch
2.75
The Book and the Brotherhood is a novel about longing for impossible relationships. In the penultimate scene, Gerard's inner monologue makes it explicit. We crave security; we imagine those who love us can bestow it. We want to possess others, but we do not want to be possessed ourselves. The relationships here never are never quite friendly, or loving, or hostile. They are, however, desperate. This is not an endorsement of loneliness, but a story about dependency. Our need for other people is volatile and dangerous and dysfunctional. It is also, suggests Murdoch, all there really is.
In executing this central theme, Murdoch is reasonably effective. Her philosophical background is on full display here; she reveals an uncommon grasp of how humans think. The distance between ourselves and the physical world. The private languages we use, with ourselves and with others. Some of the relationships, however, are more compelling than others. Gerard and Jenkin's relationship feels quite rich and believable. Jean and Crimond's relationship does not. This is partly because Murdoch uses Crimond as an archetype of the inscrutable "other", the only central character for whom close third person is never deployed. Just as Jenkin fantasizes about South America, others fantasize about Crimond. Still, it is not Crimond who ends up as the inscrutable element, but those he enthralls. Though these relationships feel urgent and genuine, they lack the others' psychological nuance and essential legibility, which becomes a problem. The gestures towards political and religious themes are similarly disappointing. I was not expecting a particularly robust deconstruction, because ideologies here are mostly a stand-in; their magnetism and power is akin to that of those we long for, or long to revile. This parallel is interesting, but integrated into the main body of the novel in a somewhat awkward half-hearted way; the novel seems to be clumsily purporting to be offering more of an exploration of these ideas in-themselves than it is (or than is even necessary).
Finally, the novel feels bloated. Murdoch demonstrates quite a knack for dramatic pacing in the most plot-driven section, which falls roughly midway through the book. The more introspective beginning and end, while by no means incompetent, contain much that feels superfluous. One is left with the impression that a trimmer (and more consistent) version of this material would leave more of an impact.
In executing this central theme, Murdoch is reasonably effective. Her philosophical background is on full display here; she reveals an uncommon grasp of how humans think. The distance between ourselves and the physical world. The private languages we use, with ourselves and with others. Some of the relationships, however, are more compelling than others. Gerard and Jenkin's relationship feels quite rich and believable. Jean and Crimond's relationship does not. This is partly because Murdoch uses Crimond as an archetype of the inscrutable "other", the only central character for whom close third person is never deployed. Just as Jenkin fantasizes about South America, others fantasize about Crimond. Still, it is not Crimond who ends up as the inscrutable element, but those he enthralls. Though these relationships feel urgent and genuine, they lack the others' psychological nuance and essential legibility, which becomes a problem. The gestures towards political and religious themes are similarly disappointing. I was not expecting a particularly robust deconstruction, because ideologies here are mostly a stand-in; their magnetism and power is akin to that of those we long for, or long to revile. This parallel is interesting, but integrated into the main body of the novel in a somewhat awkward half-hearted way; the novel seems to be clumsily purporting to be offering more of an exploration of these ideas in-themselves than it is (or than is even necessary).
Finally, the novel feels bloated. Murdoch demonstrates quite a knack for dramatic pacing in the most plot-driven section, which falls roughly midway through the book. The more introspective beginning and end, while by no means incompetent, contain much that feels superfluous. One is left with the impression that a trimmer (and more consistent) version of this material would leave more of an impact.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Death of parent
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Car accident, Abortion, and Pregnancy
Minor: Alcoholism and Domestic abuse
A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post-WWII Germany by Monica Black
3.5
A Demon-Haunted Land is exceptionally written, sitting somewhere in between the registers of academic and popular history. Black excels in capturing a moment in time, elegantly weaving together the different epistomologies which characterized the postwar German experience: scientific, folkloric, political, personal. She also shows herself to be very skilled in putting the events and personalities of the postwar moment in the context of their precursors during the Third Reich, sketching out a rich web of unsaid meaning which may not be intuitive to the modern reader. We are left with a captivating and compelling portrait of the many ways in which the guilt, shame, confusion, betrayal, and alienation weighing on the minds of postwar Germans found expression in the miraculous and the diabolic, in controversial healers and destructive rumors and in all manner of supernatural presences.
This project is somewhat inconsistently structured, moving between a broadly chronological structure and a more thematic one. While the narrative is always clear and easy to follow, the lack of a consistent structural pattern tends towards leaving a somewhat impressionistic, big-picture impact on the reader. More significantly, the greatest hindrance to this project is the degree to which it relies on reading meaning into lacunae and elisions; while rigorously-sourced, this is a book about what was not said as much as it is a book about what was said. Black is fully aware of this, instructing us to listen to the "ghosts" of the past. When direct discussion of past atrocities was socially proscribed, these ghosts find other ways to speak to us.
I'm inclined to agree that Black's approach here is a useful one (although she does, from time to time, overreach in presenting certain extrapolations as fact). Unfortunately, when the ghosts are speaking to us this indirectly, their words can only carry us so far. Black spends most of the book laying out the thesis that there exists a deeper historical meaning behind the occultist phenomena she describes, and relatively little time explicating what that deeper meaning is (and what its implications are). To some extent, this would be an impossible task -- postwar Germans responded to their collective emotional state in a vast array of ways. Still, it is somewhat dissatisfying to be thoroughly convinced (for example) that the hubbub around wunderdoktor Bruno Gröning thickly resonates with postwar Germans' preoccupations with guilt and judgement, but be told next to nothing about the specific ways in which the wunderdoktor played a role in their efforts to reconcile those preoccupations.
Though limited in this way, A Demon-Haunted Land remains a very important contribution for laying out so convincingly and luridly a moment in time, and the unspoken meanings on which it was built.
This project is somewhat inconsistently structured, moving between a broadly chronological structure and a more thematic one. While the narrative is always clear and easy to follow, the lack of a consistent structural pattern tends towards leaving a somewhat impressionistic, big-picture impact on the reader. More significantly, the greatest hindrance to this project is the degree to which it relies on reading meaning into lacunae and elisions; while rigorously-sourced, this is a book about what was not said as much as it is a book about what was said. Black is fully aware of this, instructing us to listen to the "ghosts" of the past. When direct discussion of past atrocities was socially proscribed, these ghosts find other ways to speak to us.
I'm inclined to agree that Black's approach here is a useful one (although she does, from time to time, overreach in presenting certain extrapolations as fact). Unfortunately, when the ghosts are speaking to us this indirectly, their words can only carry us so far. Black spends most of the book laying out the thesis that there exists a deeper historical meaning behind the occultist phenomena she describes, and relatively little time explicating what that deeper meaning is (and what its implications are). To some extent, this would be an impossible task -- postwar Germans responded to their collective emotional state in a vast array of ways. Still, it is somewhat dissatisfying to be thoroughly convinced (for example) that the hubbub around wunderdoktor Bruno Gröning thickly resonates with postwar Germans' preoccupations with guilt and judgement, but be told next to nothing about the specific ways in which the wunderdoktor played a role in their efforts to reconcile those preoccupations.
Though limited in this way, A Demon-Haunted Land remains a very important contribution for laying out so convincingly and luridly a moment in time, and the unspoken meanings on which it was built.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Child death, Death, Genocide, Sexual assault, Suicide, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, and Medical content
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
4.75
The Old Drift is a story about Zambia, deeply infused with a sense of place, but always approaches that place (and the project of telling its history) somewhat askance. The essential details feel almost incidental. We meander through genres, through literary voices, through moments in time, and though we are given much cause to reflect along the way (even explicitly enjoined to), the narrative is riverine, bearing us with its current and arresting reflection. Though the emplotment is in some sense intricate, and the overarching structure of the book clear and intentional, the experience of moving through this book is one of meandering: drifting.
Serpell takes us in many directions with this book. Some readers will not connect as readily to some of its themes. This is hardly a disadvantage. In the end, The Old Drift has one key virtue: for a book which could spawn endless rumination and analysis, its most essential lesson is laid out clearly, elegantly, and even explicitly. In some ways, this is a book which demands a great deal from its reader. In other ways, it is shockingly direct. The reader can -- and should -- approach the book on both levels.
Narratives about the global south, and about Africa in particular, are often strikingly deterministic. Places are the way they are for Reasons, many of those reasons located in intentional acts -- of colonialists, politicians, soldiers. The Old Drift has quite a lot to say about such people, their actions, and their reasons. But at its most essential, this book is a rejoinder to such a determinism. It is a vehicle for imaginative reinvention and critical analysis, both evoked through Serpell's beautiful and painstaking writing.
Serpell takes us in many directions with this book. Some readers will not connect as readily to some of its themes. This is hardly a disadvantage. In the end, The Old Drift has one key virtue: for a book which could spawn endless rumination and analysis, its most essential lesson is laid out clearly, elegantly, and even explicitly. In some ways, this is a book which demands a great deal from its reader. In other ways, it is shockingly direct. The reader can -- and should -- approach the book on both levels.
Narratives about the global south, and about Africa in particular, are often strikingly deterministic. Places are the way they are for Reasons, many of those reasons located in intentional acts -- of colonialists, politicians, soldiers. The Old Drift has quite a lot to say about such people, their actions, and their reasons. But at its most essential, this book is a rejoinder to such a determinism. It is a vehicle for imaginative reinvention and critical analysis, both evoked through Serpell's beautiful and painstaking writing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Gore, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Terminal illness, and Medical content
Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Confinement, Drug use, Infidelity, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, and Pregnancy
Waiting: A Novel of Uganda's Hidden War by Margaret Daymond, Goretti Kyomuhendo
4.25
Waiting is an appropriate title for this story, a novel about the uncertain and unfinished experiences of rural Ugandans, buffeted by political changes which are at once distant and immediate. This is a story of observation, expectation, and dread. Kyomuhendo's characters are far from passive, and do what they can to respond to their fraught circumstances. Ultimately, though, they are required to wait. Though Waiting's plot covers the ground that would be expected of a novel, this pervasive sense of hazy anticipation and dislocation makes it read more like a short story, or a vignette.
Waiting is a straightforwardly feminist book, highlighting the ways in which violence and displacement ripple outwards and place particular burdens on women. The resulting novel is very bodily, focusing on bodily experiences (ranging from daily functions to pregnancy, illness, and injury), and the ways in which women in particular are forced to live an embodied existence. Male characters often directly pass uncomfortable tasks along to the women. The novel, in turn, passes those experiences along to the reader, making it at times a quite uncomfortable read, but very intentionally so. Waiting also has interesting things to say about social loyalties, such as ethnicity, nationality, and language, and the ways in which war and conflict recast those identities and their relationships to each other.
The immediate and embodied way daily life is presented is one of Waiting's strengths, but also its most significant weakness. The characters make difficult choices, and respond to their context in nuanced and interesting ways. These decisions, though, are mostly presented in terms of sensation and action. Kyomuhendo lives by "show, don't tell", and the resulting narrative meaningfully conveys that merely existing from moment to moment is a challenge for her characters. Even under such strain, though, there is a depth and richness to mental life which does not always come across here. Although Waiting is in some sense structurally introspective, the immediacy and sensory nature of its narrative at times detracts from directly exploring that introspection, an absence for which the overall work suffers.
Nonetheless, Waiting is a well-crafted, singular, and affecting story -- if an uncomfortable one.
Waiting is a straightforwardly feminist book, highlighting the ways in which violence and displacement ripple outwards and place particular burdens on women. The resulting novel is very bodily, focusing on bodily experiences (ranging from daily functions to pregnancy, illness, and injury), and the ways in which women in particular are forced to live an embodied existence. Male characters often directly pass uncomfortable tasks along to the women. The novel, in turn, passes those experiences along to the reader, making it at times a quite uncomfortable read, but very intentionally so. Waiting also has interesting things to say about social loyalties, such as ethnicity, nationality, and language, and the ways in which war and conflict recast those identities and their relationships to each other.
The immediate and embodied way daily life is presented is one of Waiting's strengths, but also its most significant weakness. The characters make difficult choices, and respond to their context in nuanced and interesting ways. These decisions, though, are mostly presented in terms of sensation and action. Kyomuhendo lives by "show, don't tell", and the resulting narrative meaningfully conveys that merely existing from moment to moment is a challenge for her characters. Even under such strain, though, there is a depth and richness to mental life which does not always come across here. Although Waiting is in some sense structurally introspective, the immediacy and sensory nature of its narrative at times detracts from directly exploring that introspection, an absence for which the overall work suffers.
Nonetheless, Waiting is a well-crafted, singular, and affecting story -- if an uncomfortable one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Murder
Moderate: Animal death, Chronic illness, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Excrement, and Vomit
The Way of a Pilgrim by
5.0
In one sense, The Way of A Pilgrim is a meditation on interior prayer. Its account of inward sacred experience resonates with other voices ranging from Sōtō Zen to Sufi mysticism to secular philosophy of mind. Its discussion of the cultivation of peace and contentedness is both challenging and comforting.
Even more interestingly, to me, this is a book about learning. Our narrator plays both teacher and student, often simultaneously. His approach to learning is incredibly nuanced, finding edification in direct experience, mystical intuition, formal scholarship and instruction, preaching, reading, conversing, questioning, and exchanging stories and anecdotes. Despite The Way's apparent emphasis on the singular nature of inward prayer, its vision of intellectual seeking is rich, expansive, and ambiguous. This project of continual education is further enriched by connections to themes including social class, labor, the role of the priesthood, repentance and rehabilitation, and charity. What I took away from this book most powerfully was a sense of what it is to be a learner, and those things which are demanded of spiritual learners: humility, generosity, receptiveness, discipline, and flexibility. Most of all, the transcendent link to the objects of our inquiry: the joyfulness of learning.
Savin's translation is lively, elegant, and clear. The text itself is short, readable, and thoughtfully composed. I highly recommend The Way of A Pilgrim to those in search of spiritual learning, with the caveat that it is possible to read this book cursorily. While there is nothing wrong with doing so, you'll get out what you put in.
Even more interestingly, to me, this is a book about learning. Our narrator plays both teacher and student, often simultaneously. His approach to learning is incredibly nuanced, finding edification in direct experience, mystical intuition, formal scholarship and instruction, preaching, reading, conversing, questioning, and exchanging stories and anecdotes. Despite The Way's apparent emphasis on the singular nature of inward prayer, its vision of intellectual seeking is rich, expansive, and ambiguous. This project of continual education is further enriched by connections to themes including social class, labor, the role of the priesthood, repentance and rehabilitation, and charity. What I took away from this book most powerfully was a sense of what it is to be a learner, and those things which are demanded of spiritual learners: humility, generosity, receptiveness, discipline, and flexibility. Most of all, the transcendent link to the objects of our inquiry: the joyfulness of learning.
Savin's translation is lively, elegant, and clear. The text itself is short, readable, and thoughtfully composed. I highly recommend The Way of A Pilgrim to those in search of spiritual learning, with the caveat that it is possible to read this book cursorily. While there is nothing wrong with doing so, you'll get out what you put in.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Blood, and Medical content
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton by Karl Hagen, D. Moynihan, Distributed Proofreaders, Robert Burton
Giving this book a numerical rating strikes me as a somewhat pointless exercise; to read the Anatomy of Melancholy is to sojourn in the distinct literary culture of the 17th century. Four centuries removed from the relevant notions of readership, I cannot pass a fair judgement.
By the standards of any age, though, the Anatomy of Melancholy is a singular book. Its titanic aspirations melt away genre, form, or topic, and produce something entirely sui generis. To the modern reader, it is often a frustrating work, filled with winding digressions, extravagant inventories of quotation and anecdote, distended sentences which reach towards their meaning by heaping clauses upon clauses upon clauses. It is also an inspiring book. The reader glimpses both the force and intensity of Burton's polymath intellect (polymaths having been banished from our age in favor of "generalists"), and his sincerity, humanity, and evident good intent.
The Anatomy's most powerful feature is its irrepressibly holistic approach to melancholy. We have described and circumscribed depression as a clinical phenomenon; we look to the particular and the distinct. For Burton, melancholy is at once a political problem, a social problem, a spiritual problem, an environmental problem, a physical illness, and a mental illness, all of which he takes seriously. He is interested in the relationship between the patient, the patient's friends and family, the doctor, the medicine or treatment, the surrounding context, and God. This interconnection makes his work challenging and relevant to our era of neatly compartmentalized problems and solutions.
The Anatomy's archaic form also belies deeply sophisticated ideas about the relationship between physical and mental illness, the role of memory and trauma, the social role and limitations of medicine, and the infinite heterogeneity of mental illness. Reading and relating to 17th-century accounts of what we would now call depression is cathartic and powerful. Burton's warnings against the romantic appeals of sadness and solitude also feel very contemporary. These relevant interventions are all the more challenging as we remember that Burton, like others of his age, associated all of this with a literal physical substance, choler (also called black bile, also called melancholy itself).
I would not recommend reading this book in its entirety to very many people. In all honesty, I finished it out of stubbornness. The modern reader is often frustrated by its frequent use of classical languages and verse, its heavily repetitious nature, and its many digressions (some of which read as either irrelevant, like the arcane sections on astrology or demonology, or backwards, like the diatribes against Catholics and heathens, or certain lurid descriptions of women's improprieties).
Nonetheless, the Anatomy of Melancholy is a singular and important book. I found a lot of meaning and substance while wading through it, and I am confident the book should be more known and more discussed, even when not read in its entirety.
By the standards of any age, though, the Anatomy of Melancholy is a singular book. Its titanic aspirations melt away genre, form, or topic, and produce something entirely sui generis. To the modern reader, it is often a frustrating work, filled with winding digressions, extravagant inventories of quotation and anecdote, distended sentences which reach towards their meaning by heaping clauses upon clauses upon clauses. It is also an inspiring book. The reader glimpses both the force and intensity of Burton's polymath intellect (polymaths having been banished from our age in favor of "generalists"), and his sincerity, humanity, and evident good intent.
The Anatomy's most powerful feature is its irrepressibly holistic approach to melancholy. We have described and circumscribed depression as a clinical phenomenon; we look to the particular and the distinct. For Burton, melancholy is at once a political problem, a social problem, a spiritual problem, an environmental problem, a physical illness, and a mental illness, all of which he takes seriously. He is interested in the relationship between the patient, the patient's friends and family, the doctor, the medicine or treatment, the surrounding context, and God. This interconnection makes his work challenging and relevant to our era of neatly compartmentalized problems and solutions.
The Anatomy's archaic form also belies deeply sophisticated ideas about the relationship between physical and mental illness, the role of memory and trauma, the social role and limitations of medicine, and the infinite heterogeneity of mental illness. Reading and relating to 17th-century accounts of what we would now call depression is cathartic and powerful. Burton's warnings against the romantic appeals of sadness and solitude also feel very contemporary. These relevant interventions are all the more challenging as we remember that Burton, like others of his age, associated all of this with a literal physical substance, choler (also called black bile, also called melancholy itself).
I would not recommend reading this book in its entirety to very many people. In all honesty, I finished it out of stubbornness. The modern reader is often frustrated by its frequent use of classical languages and verse, its heavily repetitious nature, and its many digressions (some of which read as either irrelevant, like the arcane sections on astrology or demonology, or backwards, like the diatribes against Catholics and heathens, or certain lurid descriptions of women's improprieties).
Nonetheless, the Anatomy of Melancholy is a singular and important book. I found a lot of meaning and substance while wading through it, and I am confident the book should be more known and more discussed, even when not read in its entirety.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
Moderate: Body shaming, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, and Murder
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
3.25
[re-read for class, not a full review]
Rulfo's sparse prose and magical realism are gripping and compelling, but a substantial part of their appeal is in their ambiguity. Once the story develops to a point at which the reader understands the rules of the world in which we're operating, the novel loses steam, in part because it is no longer as ambiguous. At heart this is a collection of stories and memories lived by different people at different times, and some are more compelling than others. Fr. Rentería is particularly compelling and interesting, in part because his story implicates the broader themes drawing the novel together in a quite nuanced way. Other stories and characters feel somewhat more peripheral.
Rulfo's sparse prose and magical realism are gripping and compelling, but a substantial part of their appeal is in their ambiguity. Once the story develops to a point at which the reader understands the rules of the world in which we're operating, the novel loses steam, in part because it is no longer as ambiguous. At heart this is a collection of stories and memories lived by different people at different times, and some are more compelling than others. Fr. Rentería is particularly compelling and interesting, in part because his story implicates the broader themes drawing the novel together in a quite nuanced way. Other stories and characters feel somewhat more peripheral.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Incest, Mental illness, Rape, Suicide, Grief, and Murder
Amerika: The Missing Person by Franz Kafka
3.25
[re-read for class, not a full review]
Amerika is far from Kafka's best; its style is somewhat rough and he hadn't yet fully developed the incisive depiction of bureaucracy which animates his later novels, especially The Trial. What stands out most prominently in Amerika is the naivite and passivity of our protagonist, Karl Rossman. In Rossman's naivite, which is particularly appropriate to a young writer, Kafka finds an interesting angle into his theme: America. Precisely because Rossman is credulous and not particularly thoughtful, through close third-person we get a fitting account of the idea of America as it appeared to Europeans of the time, especially immigrants; a conceptual gauze shrouding America as an ideology and as a set of institutions.
Amerika is far from Kafka's best; its style is somewhat rough and he hadn't yet fully developed the incisive depiction of bureaucracy which animates his later novels, especially The Trial. What stands out most prominently in Amerika is the naivite and passivity of our protagonist, Karl Rossman. In Rossman's naivite, which is particularly appropriate to a young writer, Kafka finds an interesting angle into his theme: America. Precisely because Rossman is credulous and not particularly thoughtful, through close third-person we get a fitting account of the idea of America as it appeared to Europeans of the time, especially immigrants; a conceptual gauze shrouding America as an ideology and as a set of institutions.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Confinement
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
4.75
Re-read for class. In brief, what strikes me about this book is that it's both very polished and very raw -- Woolf is a great stylist, and elegantly describes the inner lives of her characters, but there's always something jagged and ungovernable, but deeply true, right below the surface. A story of the ways in which we deal with loneliness and isolation in its various forms, but even more so, a story about the incalculable and almost metaphysical threads between us all; about togetherness. A true classic.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness and Suicide