Faust

Impressive work! Reminded me of Paradise Lost, probably because of the religious theme. Difficult to read at times, but worthwhile. Before reading this, I had been considering the reasons for human existence, and I was pretty pleased with myself when I came up with "striving." I figured that humans--and all life on the planet, in fact--were put here to strive and work and improve themselves as individuals (sorry Darwin!). I thought I had something really original there, until I realized that Goethe had figured out pretty much the same thing a few hundred years ago. Whatever. At least I had the same thought as Germany's great uber-literati.

Next...

I am reluctant to do this, but I will have to put aside much of my reading for enjoyment in favor of professional texts. I am going to turn more to nonfiction as I prepare for my next (and possibly last) major academic endeavor which I anticipate will take much of my free time for the next few years. I will still continue to read, but not nearly at the same pace I have been doing for the past couple years. Ah, well. I have to prepare myself for more sacrifices in the future (e.g., fiction, poetry, and NaNoWriMo). I am sure it will be worthwhile, though.

The Grapes of Wrath

Blew me away! I had not been looking forward to this novel. For some reason, I thought it would be boring or difficult to read. It was neither. The story and characters were so compelling that I couldn't put the book down. I loved the dialect Steinbeck wrote in for much of the book. Too often, even skilled novelists who try to write in dialect either can't get the intonations and speech patterns across accurately/effectively, or they try too hard and end up confusing the reader (as in Wuthering Heights). Steinbeck struck the right balance, and after a while, I found myself reading in an "Okie" accent.

I liked his intermediary chapters which mixed nonfiction with fiction to give the reader a sense of what was happening in the world. Sometimes the Joads fell victim to the worst-case scenarios presented in these chapters; sometimes they avoided them. I found myself looking forward to reading them to see how the Joads would handle them. Clearly, they were meant to foreground some issue or event in the novel, to provide some kind of real-world possibility of what might happen.

The characters were varied and realistic, even as they attempted to illustrate the archetypal migrant farmers. The family dynamic, the politics, the social reality -- all were portrayed vividly in immense complexity. There's so much I could say about this novel, but there just isn't space here for it. Loved Ma for her strength, Tom for his steadfastness, Al for his loyalty despite his urge toward independence, Pa for his work ethic, Uncle John for his self-loathing and guilt, Casy for his back-country philosophy, and the dog for his early flattening on the highway.

Ending was ambiguous, but I'm sure Steinbeck intended it that way. We don't know what happened to Tom, Noah, Al, and the rest of the Joads. I am reluctant to assume the worst, despite the harshness of the impending situation (i.e., three months of unemployment looming and no money cushion) because they had escaped hardships in the past. The final scene in which Rose of Sharon suckles the starving man was a disturbing end to a disturbing book.

The way the family faced adversity was truly inspiring. I don't know where Ma got her strength, but it was there when she (and the family) needed it. One of the most memorable quotes from the novel, and which sums up all that is admirable about the attitude of the Joads, was spoken by "Family-First" Ma as the flood waters are rising, threatening to wash them out of the railroad boxcar in which they are living: "Worse off we get, the more we got to do [for each other]." Amen.

A Farewell to Arms

Well, my first major Hemingway (I don't count The Old Man and the Sea as a "major" work, though it was pretty cool) in my back pocket. Pretty good. More "literary" than I thought. There was a delicacy and an intelligence beneath the surface of the text that I had not expected. Kind of like reading the poet Michael Berry: deceptively complex, touching, and graceful. I was impressed. I can easily see why Hemingway is Berry's favorite author (or one of his favorites). I enjoyed the sparse prose and the inexorable, consistently-paced movement of the plot which I found easy to read and enjoyable. There were several scenes I did not anticipate, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. The unexpected shooting of Aymo, the near-shooting of Frederick, the escape into Switzerland (and his near-capture). I appreciated the atmospherics of the novel as well. The discussion between the two provincially-partisan Swiss guards after the border-crossing as each extols the virtues of his home territory and attempts to convince Frederick and Catherine to visit (with all their money, of course). This novel was quite a change from the dense Victorian prose of Dickens and a startling contrast to the flowing, poetic style of Nabokov. I'm looking forward to The Grapes of Wrath next. This would be an interesting work to read right after having finished Catch-22. Both have similarly cynical (maybe disillusioned?) takes on different wars.