The Odyssey: Books 7-12

In this section of The Odyssey, we get to know our title character a little more.  While it's admirable that he claims to be devoted to his wife and home, I suspect that he might just say this because it's what he's supposed to say, since he does so many IDIOTIC things that delay his return.

Nevertheless, I have formed a special bond with Odysseus.  It seems we have a few things in common:

1.  We both have a problem with emotional eating:

The belly's a shameless dog, there's nothing worse.
Always insisting, pressing, it never let's us forget--
destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness,
sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding.
'Eat, drink!' It blots out all memory
of my pain, commanding, 'Fill me up!'

2.  We both cry during an evening's entertainment:

That was the song the famous harper sang
but great Odysseus melted into tears,
running down from his eyes to wet his cheeks . . . 

For Odysseus it's accounts of the battle of Troy that get him going, for me it's Friday Night Lights, among other things. 

3.  Bad things happen when we fall asleep.

'Father Zeus!  The rest of you blissful gods who never die--
you with your fatal sleep, you lulled me into disaster,
Left on their own, look what a monstrous thing
my crew concocted!'

Whether it's his crew letting out the torrential winds or killing the sun god's cattle, you would think that Odysseus would have insomnia.  For me a nap can be a risky thing--when I wake up, I never know what my own little crew has concocted.  It's usually some sort of monstrous mess.  Occasionally, it involves a yummy baked good, so I guess I'll forgive them.


I would love to write more, but I have a mid-term to study for.  Coincidentally, some of the material I will be studying involves Ancient Greece.  Both good and bad timing.  For more thoughts on this section, check out the list of other posts at Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity.

The Odyssey: Books 1-6

 
If I had to come up with a new title for the first four books of The Odyssey, I would go with this:

Eat, Bathe, Cry:

One Young Man's Search For News About His Missing Father

It's been twenty years since Odysseus left for Troy, and no one knows if he is alive or dead. Several suitors, banking on the "dead" option, want to marry Penelope, and will wait for her to choose a candidate, shamelessly mooching off of the estate.  With a little push from Athena, son Telemachus decides he is done playing the victim at the hands of the obnoxious suitors.   He calls an assembly that turns out to be contentious and somewhat unproductive, despite Athena's instant image-enhancing powers.  He nevertheless continues with the next part of the plan--a secret trip to find out if anyone has information concerning the fate of Odysseus.  

First, Telemachus visits King Nestor.  There he listens to Nestor's war stories, sheds some tears, feasts, sleeps, gets bathed and oiled, and feasts again.  Then he takes off with his new buddy Pisistratus to King Menelaus where likewise they feast, bathe, share stories, bawl some more, feast, get drugged by Helen, sleep, shares stories, and feast again.  Where can I sign up for this life?

Meanwhile, "back at the ranch," the suitors and Penelope finally realize that Telemachus is gone.  The suitors sail out to ambush Telemachus,  and we are left at that scene, wondering what will become of Telemachus.

As for Odysseus, he is indeed alive, and has been shacking up with the goddess Calypso, who has offered him immortality if he will be her husband.  Every man's dream, right?  But Odysseus spends his days on the headland crying, "wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish/ gazing out over the barren seas through blinding tears" because he yearns to return to his wife and home.  What a good, good man!  No wonder all the women seem to fall all over themselves to help him: Calypso, who, when forced to let him go by Zeus, gives him help and advice;  Leucothea, who gives him a magic scarf of immortality when Poseidon sends his storms; Athena, helping him out once again; and last of all in this section, Nausicaa, who feeds and helps Odysseus get all gussied up for his introduction to the king and queen of Phaeacia.

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For the most part, Telemachus is the star of the show in this first section.  Thanks to Athena, he has realized that it's time to grow up and be a man.  It's hard not to judge him and wonder why he hasn't come of age sooner in life, but I need to remember that he has been raised without a father, babied by his mother, and teased by the suitors.  

I tried not to cringe when his first assertive act was to reprimand his mother, but that's my own modern sensibilities coming into play, I guess.  He does seem to waver a bit throughout these first chapters, which I think is pretty realistic--one minute he's taking control, and the next he's falling apart again.  He seemed to be doing so well with his speech at the assembly, and then all of a sudden, he's bursting into tears, putting himself in the position of one to be pitied, not respected.  But he's trying, and growth is, after all, a process.

Then I wonder, how much of his growth is really him?  His courage never quite seems to come from within--it's mostly imbued by Athena.  Will he get to a point where he has some self-esteem?  Does he even have it in him?  One of the things I liked about Odysseus in The Iliad was that he was a man of action.  A lying, scheming man of action, but at least he was doing something.  I'm not sure yet if Telemachus inherited this quality from his father.  And maybe I'm delving into his character much more than Homer even intended.

I always seem to have a few thoughts that I don't want to put into full-on paragraphs in a post that is getting quite lengthy already.  Here are a few of those, and maybe they will come up in later weeks:

• I'm interested in the idea of identity, which I know comes up more later.  Athena has appeared as many different people already.  Telemachus is trying to figure out who he is.  Others can see Odysseus' features in his face and body.
• Women play quite a prominent part in the poem so far.  So far they seem to act as protectors in many cases.  When they're not weaving, that is.  Or braiding their hair.  
• As with anything with the Greek gods--must they meddle so much?  Zeus says they do mess things up a bit sometimes, but people do things that mess things up even more.  A shared responsibility for hardship?
• Penelope--does she lead them on, as the suitors claim?  How does she "exploit" the gifts given her?  Does she tease them to exercise power, or are their accusations false?   She does seem to be quite faithful to Odysseus, which is more than can be said for Agamemnon's wife.

*For more thoughts on The Odyssey, Books 1-6, visit this post at Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity. 
*I am reading the Robert Fagles translation for the readalong. 
*If you actually read this entire post, I think you deserve some sort of an award ;-).

Group Read or Pipe Dream?

I may have learned to resist signing up for too many reading challenges, but a group-read of a book that I've been wanting to get to is hard to resist.  I'm not sure if I will have the time to read, post, and visit other participants in these read-a-longs, but for now, I'm just going to pretend it's completely doable, and ignore the fact that in the last four days, my reading has been limited to the five minutes before I fall asleep.

Trish from Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity is hosting a group read of The Odyssey this month (six books each week).  I've read it before, a translation by T. E. Lawrence (yep, Lawrence of Arabia) but I've had the Robert Fagles translation on my shelf, and would like to reread it before tackling some presumably good stuff (The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood) and some scary stuff (Ulysses by James Joyce). 

Frances from Nonsuch Book is hosting a group read of this new translation of Dr. Zhivago, with discussion taking place between November 16-30.  I haven't read this since junior year of high school for a book report, and I'm sure this experience will be much different.

I'm also continuing a fabulous readalong of Lonesome Dove, jointly hosted by Amused by Books, My Friend Amy, and Gerbera Daisy Diaries.  Each Wednesday, one of these blogs has a set of questions for a ten-chapter section.  I haven't been posting for each section on my own blog, just commenting on their blogs each week.  Hopefully at the end I'll do one review for the whole thing.  By the way, I was very snobbish about the copy I'm reading.  I had to have the one above, and I am loving the twinkly stars on the cover.  

I'm also looking forward to a traditional book club read of Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis to be held early in December (?).  I read and loved Main Street, so I'm really excited about this one.  Isn't that the greatest cover? 

October!

Happy Halloween!  What a week!  I managed to survive this week without:

• My husband (out of town) 

• My Sansa Clip (getting repaired. Housework without an audio book?  I just ended up doing less cleaning.)

• Bread and sugar (South Beach Diet Phase 1.  Not one piece of Halloween candy has entered my mouth . . . yet.)

All in all, October has been a wonderful month!  I made a concerted effort to read excessively  this month and prepared accordingly.  I made a month of freezer dinners, and gave my house a good enough clean-up.  Yes, I do realize this is the sort of thing people do before having a baby or major surgery.  "Nesting" for books?  I'm screwed up, what can I say?

But you have to admit that October is an exciting month for reading in the book blogging world.  I loved joining in on Dewey's Read-a-thon for what I think is the sixth time.  Each time I read less and less, but it's still fun, and there's a comfort in knowing there are others all over the world who think it's fun, too!

October is also wraps up Carl's R.I.P. Challenge.  I don't usually read horror and mysteries, so I love the change of pace this challenge provides for me, and it gets me in the Halloween spirit.  I read more than I planned, but many of these are quite short.  Here's the final report on my reading:





Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury:  (Review here.)

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I Am Legend by Richard Matheson:  This short novel does its job of creating suspense and horror.  The movie is better, but it was interesting to see the same themes set in a different time period.  The ending is abrupt, but meaningful.  I did not read any of the unrelated short stories that followed. 

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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (audio):  This is my first Christie, and I was happy to learn that audio was a great format.  I'm a really slow thinker, and I wasn't sure if I would be able to follow a mystery on audio, but it worked out great.  I'll be listening to more!

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The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:  I'm reading all of the Sherlock Holmes works in order of publication, and this was next.  It's definitely my favorite of the novels so far.

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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: (Review here.)

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The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre:  My first le Carre, and I was impressed.  I loved the story and the writing.  For a wonderful review on what makes it so great, read this post from The Literate Man.

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The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (audio):  Great audio production! It's very gothic, and the readers really helped set the mood.  I'm thinking I enjoyed this more as an audio than I would have reading a print copy.

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The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey:  A historical mystery solved from a hospital bed!  I enjoyed it, but had to read carefully to absorb all of the history of Richard III and his alleged murder of the Princes in the Tower. 

I'm in the middle of reading The Woman in White and listening to The Graveyard Book with my kids.


I also experienced a bit of craftiness this month.  I was in the mood to sew costumes this year, and here's what we ended up with:

A pig

And a pirate:

My other daughter put together a cute cat outfit, and my son wore a Spiderman T-shirt.  Costumes are one of the few things that get easier when your kids enter the teen years.

We also did a craft that has been waiting to be done for a few years!  The kids and I made a  few spider wreaths like this one:

We were also hoping to make mummy legs and witch hats, but somehow we didn't get to them.  Where does the time go?  (Yes, I do know the answer to that one.)

Tonight we celebrated by eating our traditional Mummy Pizzas and Monster Shakes:

and some of us watched (very LOUDLY) the Saints vs. Steelers game.  Mr. Book Clutter is a happy man tonight!

Madame Bovary Part III and Final Thoughts

"From that moment on, her life was no more than a confection of lies in which she wrapped her love, as though in veils, to hide it" (240).

I have just finished a book about contemptible characters who do and say horrendous things, nevertheless I relished almost every page.  I feel as though I paid the characters much more attention than they deserved--my fascination with them  was matched only by their own self-absorption.  I felt like a voyeur  delving   into Emma's psyche while witnessing her desperate performances, "playacting" as her mother-in-law describes it.  She and other characters seem obsessed with crafting invented images of themselves, with no substance to uphold them, like Dr. Canivet, described as "practicing virtue without believing in it."   And yet I was riveted by this dichotomy between their inner motives and outer actions.  They're all (with a few exceptions) just a bunch of poseurs, however realistically portrayed.  Is it morbid to have been so entertained by the Bovarys' downward spiral and demise?  Well, at least I can accuse Flaubert of the same insensitivity in the writing of it.

If this story can be described as a train wreck, then in Part III the train is accelerating at an alarming rate, and I came just short of closing my eyes to avoid seeing the inevitable outcome.   This section seems frantic, and as the pace quickens, the irony becomes more frequent and the sarcasm more caustic.  Flaubert's beloved hats go on, then off; the colors are electrifying; and almost everything comes in sets of three.  I laughed.  I cringed.  It moved me--to judgment, which the narrator so avidly suspends.  I've got a whole collection of one-liners that kept me entertained.   Here's a few:

Emma's conversation with Leon before their runaway romp in the carriage: 

"It's quite improper, you know."

"In what way?" replied the clerk.  "They do it in Paris!"

And that remark, like an irresistible argument, decided her.

Pere Rouault, after Emma's funeral, in so much grief he cannot even bear to sleep in the Bovarys' house or see his granddaughter, says to Charles:  "Goodbye! . . . You're a good fellow!  And never fear, I'll not forget,"  he said, slapping his thigh.  "You'll still get your turkey."

Of Homais' ambitions:  "He followed the great chocolate movement."  (I don't even know if this was meant to be humorous, but it tickled me.)

I came to Madame Bovary with a fairly clean slate, and my expectations were all wrong, in a satisfying way.   What I thought was going to be a stodgy telling of a dissatisfied French housewife turned out to be  an in-depth psychological study in the form of a brilliant tragicomedy.  There are so many things that can be discussed (the different power structure in each of Emma's relationships, class distinctions,  the significance of the Blind Man, etc., etc., etc.), and I trust that other participants in the group read will cover them expertly.  Thanks again to Frances for hosting.  It has been wonderful (and humbling) to virtually rub shoulders with some very insightful and educated readers.

Madame Bovary Part 2

"One had to discount, [Rodolphe] thought,  exaggerated speeches that concealed mediocre affections; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors . . ." (167)

Later, Emma to Rodolphe:  "There's not a desert, not a precipice, not an ocean I wouldn't cross with you.  When we're living together, our life will be like an embrace that becomes closer and more complete every day!" (174)

Gag!  (And I hate Rodolphe.  Why does he have to be the only perceptive one of the lot?)

My notes on MB are in my daughter's car all day, but I want to get a few vague thoughts out about Part II before I continue reading and take a final ride on the roller coaster of Emma's mood swings in Part III.  Luckily I have managed to avoid ever hearing or reading how the book ends, although I can only think of two possible outcomes, one of which involves the potato garden graveyard.

In Part II, I often found myself amused and horrified at the same time (like the club foot surgery!  Eek!), an effect that I'm sure was intended.   Rather than the lists of details Flaubert often inserts into Part I, I felt like he used details mainly to create contrasts that had a very dissonant feeling.  For instance, he writes some  passages that, taken out of context, perhaps in the midst of a novel like Jane Eyre, would seem romantic and moving, but he sets them up right against a few distasteful goodies, like Rodolphe's shiny patent leather boots in which he was "trampling the horse dung underfoot," and then when he pulls out three stools instead of two for their rendezvous in the town hall.  The overall effect makes the "romance" rather nauseating and  Flaubert makes you see it for what it is--a load of crap, as smelly as the manure on Rodolphe's shiny shoe.  But what can you expect from a romance begun at a bloodletting? 

How do I feel about Emma at this point? That's still a bit complicated.  I hate her as a mother, and her selfishness is aggravating.  I want to sympathize with her because she is a woman trapped by her circumstances, as I have sympathized with female characters in other novels for the same reasons.  She herself is a bundle of contradictions.  She lives in this intangible dream world, but at the same time has an obsession with physical objects.  It's almost as if they are the only things tethering her to this world.   In a modern setting, I think she could be treated for bipolar disorder, but I don't quite want to let her off the hook so easily. But then again, she lives in this provincial town where the most excitement they get is a field trip to the local flax mill and a long political speech at an agricultural fair.  I would worship Sir Walter Scott too.

Many thanks to Frances of Nonsuch Book for hosting this group read.  I'm enjoying it immensely and getting much more out of it than if I were reading on my own.   On to Part III!

Non-fiction Review: Sisters in War by Christina Asquith

Author: Christina Asquith
Published: September, 2009 (Random House)
Length: 352 pages
Source: Local Library
Author Website

Personal Enrichment Factor: 4.5/5

I've noticed since I gave up the notion of reviewing every book I read that I now tend to shy away from reviewing non-fiction.  I think this is because I don't feel like a have much expertise in certain subject matter (especially politics!) and I feel like I'm still at a stage of objectively gathering information, rather than forming arguable opinions.  But every once in a while I come across a book that I just want to share, one that I think others would find enriching as well.  I decided I would format my non-fiction reviews in a way that I think will torture my brain a bit less by focusing on the things I would personally most want to know about when choosing non-fiction titles.  So here goes:

What made me want to read this book:  It was a book club selection.  I hadn't even heard of it until it was chosen.

Short synopsis:  Sisters in War is the story of  four women in Iraq during the U.S. occupation and the chaos of the insurgency--two Iraqi sisters, one U.S. soldier and a U.S. aid worker–whose experiences show the challenges that Iraqi women face in attempting to gain basic rights in a time of upheaval.

My own personal background with the subject matter:  I have a very general knowledge of the time-line of events during the Iraq war, and have previously read the book Reporting Iraq, which contains several personal accounts of journalists covering the various stages of events.

Readability:  Very easy to read without seeming too basic.  One of the book club members said that she remembers Asquith saying in an interview that she purposely wrote it at a level that could be read by junior high/ high school students as well as adults. 

What I liked most about the book:  I really appreciated the fact that the author did not make herself a part of the story. The focus is on the four women, so some of the irritations I feel when reading memoirs were not an issue.  I also liked the details of women's lives, and got a better sense of what it's like to be a woman living in a war-torn country:  "With a decade of experience in aid work in the Arab world, [Manal, the  Muslim-American aid-worker] knew the first casualties of war were the most essential ingredients to women's freedom--security and stability.  Without these things, women couldn't even leave the house." 

(Picture of author with a family in Basra, Iraq from the book's website.)

How this book changed me/affected my life:  I'm not a very opinionated person--I can usually see both sides of an issue and I have a hard time taking a stance one way or the other.  But when it comes to women's rights, I can get pretty riled up, and although this book isn't sensational at all, it did increase my desire to do something to help.  I visited the Women for Women International website, an organization mentioned in the book, which provides information and ways to help.  I've signed up for the newsletter and "connected" with  the organization on Facebook.  A baby step on the road to activism, but it has to start somewhere, right?

Author on YouTube:  I almost always check out YouTube for author interviews when reading newer non-fiction books, and find them very enlightening  This one is actually a talk given by Asquith at Northeastern University.  It's quite lengthy but well worth the time, especially if you don't plan on reading the book:

Would I personally recommend this book?  YES!

Other review(s):  Rhapsody in Books