What has been read and what has been seen
Lawrence Durrell: The Alexandria Quartet
I recently finished The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, and for the last few days I’ve tried to put into words what I felt about the book. For several reasons I’ve found this rather hard - mostly because the book is such a complex mosaic, in fact down right labyrinthic, that I’m not sure where to start.
The main story is structured around a group of people living in Alexandria in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and most of them live a intrigue filled bohemian life trying to figure out "what is love" "What is literature", "What is art" and other platitudes. The main character is a man we will learn I called Darley and his quest to tell the story of these years and the people he knew. Interestingly enough Darley runs into some rather serious problems:
"I wish I knew. I wish I knew. So much has been revealed to me by all this that I feel myself to be, as it were, standing upon the threshold of a new book -a new Alexandria. The old evocative outlines which I drew, intertwining them with the names of the city’s exemplars - Cavafy, Alexander, Cleopatra and the rest - were subjective ones. I had made the image my own jealous personal property, and it was true yet only within the limitations of a truth only partially perceived. Now, in the light of all these new treasures - for truth, though merciless as love, must always be a treasure - what should I do? Extend the frontiers of original truth, filling it with the rubble to build a new Alexandria?" Durrell p. 338-339
That in a way captures the main problem of Durrell’s main narrator - what happened? What really happened those years he spent in Alexandria?
Durrell plays with the how truth is often what we would like it to be, that truth is something molded not just by the events it encompasses - but also by the memories of these events ad the emotional investment inherent in these memories. For what do we wish to remember? What do we choose to overlook - and what doe we wish to forget? And ever present is the idea that memories change as we invest them with emotional meaning.
All of these things are important in creating a picture of the past and with The Alexandria Quratet Durrell explores this through the eyes of many, but specifically Darley. He’s a novelist of some talent, though not as great as others. He has what he thinks of as a passionate affaire with a woman called Justine - but finds out that it was something else entirely. He trusts people he shouldn’t, and thinks himself disliked by people who really liked him.
And after reading a while you realise that Darley is a very, very unreliable narrator. He does not see people for who they really are, but sees them as part of the story. Or as he says himself:
"What I most need to do is to record experiences, not in the order in which they took place - for that us history - but in the order they first became significant for me." p. 97
Fact is I really liked this book. I found none of the character particularly appealing, but I loved the premise of it all and the wonderful journey you have as a reader trying to figure out the mosaic of Durrell’s story. I loved the way the text twisted and turned revealing some truths and renouncing others. How Darley keeps viewing everything through a story he has already created, rather than seeing things for what they are. For instance he constantly referes to Cavafy’s poems - and after a while you get a feeling that Darley isn’t trying to see the true Alexandria (if such a thing exists), but Cavafy’s Alexandria - and this both enriches and twists his vision. In short the damn meta of it all.
There are also some fascinating hints that Darley’s search for the truth and what happened is also a search for self-knowledge, and that this is echoed by his brief stint with Gnosticism. After all Gnosticism works after the idea of gnosis or knowing, and the idea that one can discern between several different forms of knowing - of which self-knowledge is one of the highest. Now I’ve always loved literary and religious references in things I read or view - so the inclusion of all this in The Alexandria Quartet delighted me.
This is not to say that the book is without flaws. There were a few things I found slightly annoying, and the chief being references like "the mind of the oriental" and "these Alexandrian women" - but these remarks are always in conjuncture with the narrator, and in many ways can be seen to be reflections of the narrators view of the world, more than how the world truly is. In fact in one passage another narrator makes fun of the first narrator for grouping women up and treating them like a race apart. But all in all it’s a book I would recommend. It’s heavy and dense and it needs time - but I found it very intriguing and rather though provoking and it’s nice when literature can get under your skin and annoy you a little bit. Changes how you view the world, and that is almost never bad.
Flags of Our fathers
I guess most people know the basic premise of this movie - the battle of Iwo Jima and the soldiers who raised the flag there. Facts first - I really liked it. The camera work was amazing, and it was fascinating to see how Eastwood had taken the colour saturation trend started by Saving Private Ryan (and continued by Band of Brothers, Where Trumpets Fade, Saints and Soldiers etc.) and nearly turned it black and white. It gave it a starched, sombre look that suited it well.
There are other things I liked about the movie as well- how Doc Bradley’s memories of the battle were disjointed and often repetitive, very much like memories are. They gave no straight narrative or no idea of the big picture. In fact if you didn’t know much about the Iwo Jima battle going in, this film would not enlighten you. The more I think about it, the more I feel that was the point. Traditionally Hollywood’s war movies will start at point A, you as a viewer will be told the objective (what the troops will do, how and why), then you will see this played out for you - and you will reach point B. the end, where everything is summed up.
Flag of Our Fathers shies away from this. It gives you multiple point A.’s - the old man waking form the nightmare, the young man interviewing veterans and the set up on the ship with the soldiers. In many ways you are told the objective - take Iwo Jima - but you never see it, there is never the closing point B. to end the combat. Instead the film takes a fascinating dance through flashbacks and jump cuts - and no straight narrative of the combat is really given. When does Iggy die? Was it before the flag? After the flag? Was it before Mike died? After Mike? I have no idea, and the film doesn’t bother giving an answer. Because telling the straight story of Iwo Jima is, I feel, not what Eastwood intends.
See what found to be extremely fascinating with Eastwood’s film is that it isn’t a war movie as such - but more a commentary on war movies and depiction of World War II.
Granted the film contains combat scenes, but the main narrative of the film isn’t combat related. The combat on Iwo Jima is the back drop, the wheels that set it all in motion - but it is not the main focus of the film. Contrast if you like with Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down who are both classical combat films. There the combat is at the forefront of the film - in influences all the situations and character developments.It also contains the straight point A to B narrative. (Ryan even has it as a tag line "This time the mission is a man!" So then you know - the point of the movie is to find Ryan.)
In Flags this is not the case. The combat is the starting base, but the main drive is how an act of flag raising gets turned into something else, something symbolic - and how this affects the people who participated. That is why I feel the main focus of the movie was how we choose what will be our history, and how we shape it to sooth our needs. Or as someone in the film says: Everybody saw that damn picture and made up their own story about it.
It shows how we take ordinary men (like the flagraises) and make them larger than life. Quite literary in one aspect as shown by the Iwo Jima monument. We make heroes out of people who did not necessarily want to be heroes, and push aside those who are. In the film a major minor point (if you follow) is how one flagraiser Harlon, is mistaken for another, Hank - and how the storytellers (aka the Governments War Drive) choose to go with Hank because otherwise the story would be to complicated.
Also when the all the yells for "corpsman" made me think of the episode Bastogne in Band of brothers. It’s possibly my favourite of all the episodes, but it made me sure of one thing - being a medic in a war situation is hell. All your friends dying around you, and you practically powerless to stop it? *shivers*
So tomorrow I'm watching "Letters from Iwo Jima". More about that then.
I recently finished The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, and for the last few days I’ve tried to put into words what I felt about the book. For several reasons I’ve found this rather hard - mostly because the book is such a complex mosaic, in fact down right labyrinthic, that I’m not sure where to start.
The main story is structured around a group of people living in Alexandria in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and most of them live a intrigue filled bohemian life trying to figure out "what is love" "What is literature", "What is art" and other platitudes. The main character is a man we will learn I called Darley and his quest to tell the story of these years and the people he knew. Interestingly enough Darley runs into some rather serious problems:
"I wish I knew. I wish I knew. So much has been revealed to me by all this that I feel myself to be, as it were, standing upon the threshold of a new book -a new Alexandria. The old evocative outlines which I drew, intertwining them with the names of the city’s exemplars - Cavafy, Alexander, Cleopatra and the rest - were subjective ones. I had made the image my own jealous personal property, and it was true yet only within the limitations of a truth only partially perceived. Now, in the light of all these new treasures - for truth, though merciless as love, must always be a treasure - what should I do? Extend the frontiers of original truth, filling it with the rubble to build a new Alexandria?" Durrell p. 338-339
That in a way captures the main problem of Durrell’s main narrator - what happened? What really happened those years he spent in Alexandria?
Durrell plays with the how truth is often what we would like it to be, that truth is something molded not just by the events it encompasses - but also by the memories of these events ad the emotional investment inherent in these memories. For what do we wish to remember? What do we choose to overlook - and what doe we wish to forget? And ever present is the idea that memories change as we invest them with emotional meaning.
All of these things are important in creating a picture of the past and with The Alexandria Quratet Durrell explores this through the eyes of many, but specifically Darley. He’s a novelist of some talent, though not as great as others. He has what he thinks of as a passionate affaire with a woman called Justine - but finds out that it was something else entirely. He trusts people he shouldn’t, and thinks himself disliked by people who really liked him.
And after reading a while you realise that Darley is a very, very unreliable narrator. He does not see people for who they really are, but sees them as part of the story. Or as he says himself:
"What I most need to do is to record experiences, not in the order in which they took place - for that us history - but in the order they first became significant for me." p. 97
Fact is I really liked this book. I found none of the character particularly appealing, but I loved the premise of it all and the wonderful journey you have as a reader trying to figure out the mosaic of Durrell’s story. I loved the way the text twisted and turned revealing some truths and renouncing others. How Darley keeps viewing everything through a story he has already created, rather than seeing things for what they are. For instance he constantly referes to Cavafy’s poems - and after a while you get a feeling that Darley isn’t trying to see the true Alexandria (if such a thing exists), but Cavafy’s Alexandria - and this both enriches and twists his vision. In short the damn meta of it all.
There are also some fascinating hints that Darley’s search for the truth and what happened is also a search for self-knowledge, and that this is echoed by his brief stint with Gnosticism. After all Gnosticism works after the idea of gnosis or knowing, and the idea that one can discern between several different forms of knowing - of which self-knowledge is one of the highest. Now I’ve always loved literary and religious references in things I read or view - so the inclusion of all this in The Alexandria Quartet delighted me.
This is not to say that the book is without flaws. There were a few things I found slightly annoying, and the chief being references like "the mind of the oriental" and "these Alexandrian women" - but these remarks are always in conjuncture with the narrator, and in many ways can be seen to be reflections of the narrators view of the world, more than how the world truly is. In fact in one passage another narrator makes fun of the first narrator for grouping women up and treating them like a race apart. But all in all it’s a book I would recommend. It’s heavy and dense and it needs time - but I found it very intriguing and rather though provoking and it’s nice when literature can get under your skin and annoy you a little bit. Changes how you view the world, and that is almost never bad.
Flags of Our fathers
I guess most people know the basic premise of this movie - the battle of Iwo Jima and the soldiers who raised the flag there. Facts first - I really liked it. The camera work was amazing, and it was fascinating to see how Eastwood had taken the colour saturation trend started by Saving Private Ryan (and continued by Band of Brothers, Where Trumpets Fade, Saints and Soldiers etc.) and nearly turned it black and white. It gave it a starched, sombre look that suited it well.
There are other things I liked about the movie as well- how Doc Bradley’s memories of the battle were disjointed and often repetitive, very much like memories are. They gave no straight narrative or no idea of the big picture. In fact if you didn’t know much about the Iwo Jima battle going in, this film would not enlighten you. The more I think about it, the more I feel that was the point. Traditionally Hollywood’s war movies will start at point A, you as a viewer will be told the objective (what the troops will do, how and why), then you will see this played out for you - and you will reach point B. the end, where everything is summed up.
Flag of Our Fathers shies away from this. It gives you multiple point A.’s - the old man waking form the nightmare, the young man interviewing veterans and the set up on the ship with the soldiers. In many ways you are told the objective - take Iwo Jima - but you never see it, there is never the closing point B. to end the combat. Instead the film takes a fascinating dance through flashbacks and jump cuts - and no straight narrative of the combat is really given. When does Iggy die? Was it before the flag? After the flag? Was it before Mike died? After Mike? I have no idea, and the film doesn’t bother giving an answer. Because telling the straight story of Iwo Jima is, I feel, not what Eastwood intends.
See what found to be extremely fascinating with Eastwood’s film is that it isn’t a war movie as such - but more a commentary on war movies and depiction of World War II.
Granted the film contains combat scenes, but the main narrative of the film isn’t combat related. The combat on Iwo Jima is the back drop, the wheels that set it all in motion - but it is not the main focus of the film. Contrast if you like with Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down who are both classical combat films. There the combat is at the forefront of the film - in influences all the situations and character developments.It also contains the straight point A to B narrative. (Ryan even has it as a tag line "This time the mission is a man!" So then you know - the point of the movie is to find Ryan.)
In Flags this is not the case. The combat is the starting base, but the main drive is how an act of flag raising gets turned into something else, something symbolic - and how this affects the people who participated. That is why I feel the main focus of the movie was how we choose what will be our history, and how we shape it to sooth our needs. Or as someone in the film says: Everybody saw that damn picture and made up their own story about it.
It shows how we take ordinary men (like the flagraises) and make them larger than life. Quite literary in one aspect as shown by the Iwo Jima monument. We make heroes out of people who did not necessarily want to be heroes, and push aside those who are. In the film a major minor point (if you follow) is how one flagraiser Harlon, is mistaken for another, Hank - and how the storytellers (aka the Governments War Drive) choose to go with Hank because otherwise the story would be to complicated.
Also when the all the yells for "corpsman" made me think of the episode Bastogne in Band of brothers. It’s possibly my favourite of all the episodes, but it made me sure of one thing - being a medic in a war situation is hell. All your friends dying around you, and you practically powerless to stop it? *shivers*
So tomorrow I'm watching "Letters from Iwo Jima". More about that then.