culture – Great books blog

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 9/10
Overall: 4 stars

You know the expression, ‘so good it hurts’? Well, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is sort-of the inverse of that. It hurts so much … it’s good. The story is so gut-wrenching. So over-the-top human, you get sucked in and hurt along with the main character’s hurt. It definitely isn’t a happy book, but it is compelling and thought provoking.

In American Pastoral, the narrator is Nathan Zuckerman, a Jewish man living in the 1990s (now in his 60s) recounting not only his own life, but the life of his childhood local hero – Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov. Needless to say, the Swede’s charmed existence of being the realisation of the American Dream in the heavily Jewish New Jersey of the mid-century doesn’t last him through his entire life, though it takes Nathan some digging to uncover what happened. Precisely what *does* happen, and how the Swede himself feels about it is never entirely clear, but Roth does a phenomenal job of showing us our options for interpretation, and getting me to ponder imponderable questions about social upheaval and personal trauma.

The focus of the work (there are lots of intricacies, and don’t want to over-indulge details) is Nathan uncovering the fact that in the 60s/70s the Swede’s daughter is somehow involved in a local Vietnam war protest which involves blowing up a pharmacy. It kills an innocent pharmacist. How can a ‘together’, charming, good-looking man have produced such a child? Who is this teenage horror? Are her beliefs justified? Did she do it, anyway? And how does this effect his relationship with his own parents, brother, and wife?

As we read more and more about the back-story and the ‘present’ day (the book does a lot of flashing back, reconstructing, and surmising) it becomes teeth-suckingly painful. I wanted to read more, but had to pace myself simply because of the intensity.

Like Roth’s other book I’ve reviewed, Portnoy’s Complaint, the title character certainly has the tendency to ramble and rant, but here it is more targeted, more focused. And I developed a real sense of empathy for a few of the main characters which I lacked in Portnoy. To be honest, I didn’t at all expect the drama/trauma of what I subsequently experienced in reading American Pastoral, but it was well worth it. A definite must-read.

Page turner: 8/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 10/10
Overall: 5 stars

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, is brilliant.

In my head, I thought it would be a sort-of precursor to 1984: author creates totalitarian regime for political point. Point made well and clear, and good story along the way an added bonus. (Not to diminish from 1984, which I will certainly get to and give proper consideration in due course!) A Brave New World is so much better than that. Huxley, in 1932, publishes a book that creates an entirely different planet- full of crazy rocket technology, syntethetic experiences, and sky scrapers- that hasn’t, really, aged. And this new planet isn’t really the result of an intentially extreme political party gaining world dominination. Instead, it is an entirely new culture. A new world. One that I had never even considered feasible.

The brave new world which Huxley writes about is a world of ‘decanting’ rather than ‘birth’; where happiness, consumption, and stability reign at the price of passion, liberty, and independence. Imagine a world where ‘pneumatic’ is the highest of compliments. It’s so very, very backwards from what we all take for granted. But it takes not-very-long before you get into it. Even as I read about the conditioning that people go through in order to create this society of solidarity (think Pavlov … on crack), I felt for them. You feel the pressures of thier invisible constraints. And you empathize.

The appropriately eerie cover from my edition of Brave New World

Really, I think this book should have been in the curiculum on one of my university anthropology courses. Talking about seeing things through different lenses. It’s nurture trumping nature – but playing by totally different rules.

Meanwhile, it’s still a good story. Lots of sex (not too explicit), drugs, love, death, and a bit of adventure. And the accessories of the world itself is more novel and fascinating than plenty of ‘modern’ science fiction books.

It’s also incredibly well written. Concise but descriptive. Clever but functional. And, not to be too blunt, a very readable length. Well edited.

Brave New World is really a commentary about what happens ‘for the sake of progress’. When technology gets us so far – then what? You can see why what happens happens. And simultaneously you can totally comprehend the perspective of ‘ancient’ Shakespeare (his works feature) and of the folks of a ‘Savage Reservation’ whose way of life resembles that of Native Americans at the turn of the 20th century. Sort of.

I will admit that by a somewhat surprising turn of events the two main locations of the book- London and Malpais, New Mexico – are places that I hold rather personal connections with. But that probably just makes it a cheeky 6 stars for me, and a 5 for everyone else. So, if you are looking to read a Great Book, getting many virtual brownie points for high school English teachers the world over, go with Brave New World.