The Wall

I just read my second Hemingway novel- A Farewell to Arms a couple of weeks back; finished it through a couple of flights to home and back. I am rather introspective in translation and its brilliant when I get a book that challenges my thinking. The time is ripe for a book review.

Almost completely borrowed from his experiences as an ambulance driver in the Italian army in the Great War, it sketches the people around him in bold relief against a beleaguered Italian landscape. The narrator, Frederic Henry moves stoically through the impetuous setting; the influence of the surroundings on him always tacit. Conversations with Rinaldi, an Italian army doctor who is his best friend at the time set a tone of joi de vivre, spilling from Rinaldis approach to the war and life in general. It might seem that the narrator has imbibed some of this. Mixing with his rather dismissive attitude to the war, Henry contrasts with traditional heroes who I have come across in novels. The conversations are brilliant; there is a lot unsaid and which does not need to be. The tone of the novel lets you realise everything or maybe not, but in the least you are in their shoes, sharing their uncertainties and their restlessness. Even Henry's relationship with Catherine Barkley is defined by bits of dialogue and short meetings sparsely sown through the book. Henry breaks with his mute suffering when it comes to missing Catherine as the war takes a bad turn for the Italians. Scenes of fleeing, fear of capture and death at the hands of the Austrians and Germans, and then self righteous Carabinieri pass through at breakneck speed, with little else but survival in mind. There is little talk of existential crisis, and there is no time for any; Henry prefers to enjoy a kind of casual camaraderie with his comrades in the war. This semi autobiographical account , I would say at the risk of sounding chauvinistic, is a story that men would appreciate more. Devoid of obvious sentiment which rarely matches the complexities of real life, the novel is brimming with action and redolent of harsh reality. Espousing a brand of heroism that is not celebrated much, for precisely the reason that it is not apparent and prefers to be left alone, the novel keeps coming back to my conscious in flashes. I guess I admire that kind of living and loving life.

Posted by Peppo at 6:12 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    

Its true. People like me, common everyday folks need some kind of feeling that they are forging ahead in a way that is right... correct... umm good?
You know when it hits you right. You'll be trudging along oblivious to all the nonsense you are bringing into the world, until one fine day it all lands on you as one big pile of c*** (xcus me).

Believe me, there are people who are perfectly fine in spite of doing whatever, whenever they like like molesting furry animals, waging war and torturing their neighbours with their taste in music. These are the people we generally call liberated. And most of these people are rich and famous with a lot of female company.

Anyway, where was I. Ah. Crap falling. You'd be like WTF?? Why is this happening ? And you'll think about the liberated people and how they are still high and dry without any of the metaphorical crap on them. You'll think that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way you live that puts you at a disadvantage. I say you're missing the fact that whatever is wrong is with you! I'll explain later why this is.

You take up the first book coming your way. Im assuming you are middle brow.
Not high brow in which case you would be too smart for your pants and have Nietzsche and Freud explain away all your ills. You would have some money and female company to boot. So fark off, you're fine.

And if you're low brow, the whole world is full of stuff designed to cater to your every passing mood swing! Binge shopping, binge drinking etc, etc. So many options. You guys are the backbone of the modern capitalist economy. So the corporations have your back essentially. And since you'll have the hottest bombshells , you'll be feeling fantastic in any case. And some of you would write self help books about how other people should live their lives.

Now if you're middle brow, you're screwed to begin with. You'd do all the stuff that low brow folks do as a way of life- but there wont be enough booze or chicken in the world to fill that void that you've had the misfortune of comprehending. So thats no help.

Now the thing with "my people"- I shall henceforth refer to the middle brow populace in this fashion- is that they think that they are high brow. So ma homie goes to the nearest book store and gives his usual chetan bhagat a miss, and picks up Nietzsche expecting a dead guy who lived some time ago to have all the answers. Nietzsche talks about life, the universe and everything, but my guy here cant make it through the third para. He would have been better off with Douglas Adams but he doesn't realize it. He buys the low brow fellows self help book and realise that it doesn't help squat. At which point he realises that the problem is essentially himself and not what he does. Also he would figure at the lowest rung in every females ladder (the one that doesnt matter much!). refer http://www.laddertheory.com/ladderconstruction.htm

My guy sighs and gets back to work auditing cars, doing other peoples taxes and writing small bits of computer code. He's lucky that he has just enough grey stuff to get him through the day. That way his existential epiphanies are smothered by an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy (which is true) or by the next feel good movie. I'm no different. In fact I audit cars.

Posted by Peppo at 6:52 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    

Enter Eri and Mari Asai. Mari Asai and her sojourn into the night. After dark she finds answers to questions she hasn’t asked yet. People she meets after dark, who dwell in the gaps of conventional existence, take her to the source of her angst. The others play a role in ‘her’ life, their lives merely piquing her interest and evincing a hint of retrospection on her part. Eri Asai’s sleep is described in great detail and one wonders what to make of it all while being a mute omniscient observer. I have to get back to Shirakawa to find out why he left the Chinese prostitute naked and bleeding.

Book gives off a faint whiff of hope. The superficial is quickly whittled away – ‘After Dark’ there is much that can be gleaned from seemingly normal conversation. One is not preoccupied by the elaborate routines that one must play to satisfy ones role. At the price of uncertainty and security Mari Asai, ventures into a diner with a big book to deal with her questions.

Mari returns to something she perceives as solid and not ephemeral – reminiscing about the last time she was close to her much more beautiful sister. She had to lay some of her own doubts about herself to rest and work out a few others which the wee hours afforded her.

I wonder how many of us are lucky enough to get a chance to tie up all of the loose yarn that we make in a life of satisfying ourselves and others or in finding meaning, in the course of a night or some other time frame or event. How many of us will be sufficiently aware to perceive such an event, how many courageous enough to embrace it, and how many who are even ready to take a lesson from it. We attach too much importance to events which we participate in by choice. People like me who are obsessed with control, almost always miss the potential of the coincidental. The right side of the brain is given a miss, never taken seriously enough. Inebriation would make me better prepared probably. 

Posted by Peppo at 12:01 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    

Labels: after dark, book review, reflection

Blogger's Block- affliction? no!
Illusions of Dead beat, pity
computer viruses do not maim...

Boredom-Ennui
Babbling synonyms I try
To refrain from nose picking...

Tick Tock
Time slips out of stranglehold
Bath and Yoga Beckon....

Work on Monday
Deciding to go or bunk
I find Few things harder

Posted by Peppo at 6:04 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    

I like reading books. What I like more is reading books I can potentially brag about. But it is a stupid thought since I am averse to outright bragging and subtlety is not the way to go if you want to blow your trumpet. I just read Albert Camus, the stranger.

The problem I sometimes have with reading short books is that I mentally run through some parts mentally, even though I've read it. Not actual skipping, but that it doesn't register significantly in my conscious. Which annoys me to no end - I expect the next book to be the doors of perception to my eternally starved soul. And I find it irksome to backtrack or even re- read something.

So, to the book. It's a translation from french. Pretty good I might say. The blurb mentioned a normal, seedha human being whose fate is twisted in an instant of inanity. Fit the profile well. Brought it out damn well too.

Meursault (pardon spelling) is a "normal human being" (so to speak). I found the character a bit scary. The way he reminded me of myself. He jumped from one thing to the other. Every day of his and every action had too much to do with circumstance and his reaction to stimuli and his immediate senses. Like he could not defer his actions to more prudent planning or experience. He commits a murder. Something so prone to chance. The sun blinded him, so he pulled the trigger of a gun he carried just because he wanted to feel safe in the face of confrontation. He shot once, then he paused and then shot 4 times, while he was blinded. A case of cold blooded killing in any normal scenario. But he has no motive. He was helping a friend ward of a couple of arabs with a grudge. Brought to trial he is condemned for things he didn't give a second thought to. Being insensitive at his dead mother's funeral - not crying, having a smoke and going to the beach the next day. Fraternising with a wife beater, a questionable character who claimed his wife was cheating. Then at the end he is condemned by a jury who supposedly peered into his soul and saw a deep abyss. The book is written in his point of view. He is helpless and bored at his trial, as other people determine his fate. He finally shouts at the chaplain who tries to press a god on him the last few days before he is to be guillotined. At this point he is nostalgic, showing a few signs of deep thought and deliberation. But if you have limited time then I guess anyone would be given to more substantial thoughts.

I wonder how people have different grades of control over their thoughts and their stimuli so to speak. Frankly if you are lost during the blank spaces in your day, it is best not to perceive it- trying to change the way you think to deal with it is something I dont believe in. Suggesting something like that is like violating some elses sacred space. But I crave these blank spaces between action and perception. A kind of deeper perception zone for me. I am incapable of thinking in that kind of detail in a daily basis. During those times I am guided by some kind of instinct in the way I behave. But I can feel that vacuum- borne of not thinking enough(thats as clear as I can state it) - when I do something stupid and when I cannot control the way I behave. Just today I was stupidly shivering with rage when some stupid **** disrespected me. I didn't have the presence of mind to even cool of later.
Anyway I still have a lot to learn I guess. So I keep reading these books in the hope that I keep learning stuff about myself. Next read: More of camus. Must be good.

Posted by Peppo at 8:25 PM | 0 comments Links to this post    

To put things into context. We always gloat about quality. Our company that is. Quality this, quality that. Yakkity Yak. Thooey

--------------The Weak End to A Weak Post!!!------------

Posted by Peppo at 10:37 PM | 3 comments Links to this post    

And may the force be with you....

Posted by Peppo at 10:28 PM | 2 comments Links to this post