Operation: Read a Book, Any Damn Book
I recently decided that it was all very well whinging about how I didn’t read much for pleasure any more because I was busy and it wasn’t pleasurable and was like work and I’m in this years-long reading funk and the wine has no taste any more and blah, blah, blah, but if I seriously missed reading so much then why didn’t I just pick up a book and start reading?
So I did. The Picture of Dorian Gray was actually the second successful mission of this operation. The first was Emotionally Weird, by Kate Atkinson. (I am sticking with rereading old favourites until I am ready to attempt new books.) Words cannot describe how much I love this damn book. It is a hilarious campus novel, set at the University of Dundee in 1972, but interwoven with the present and the past. It is the story of Effie and her mother who is not her mother, the strange history of their family, and the eccentric staff and students of the university’s English department, with the Vietnam War and electricity strikes creeping in at the edges. It is almost impossible to describe the way the narratives are linked, but it’s very meta. Ostensibly Effie and her mother are telling each other their stories, but Effie’s has many twists and turns and includes the detective novel she is writing for her Creative Writing course. You just have to read it to appreciate it.
You all already know how I feel about The Picture of Dorian Gray. I said in an email to idle persiflage that every time I read the novel I find something different in it, and so I did this time around. To me it seemed a very beautiful, simple story about redemption, the capacity of the human soul to do evil, the evils of undue influence, and how evil can wear a pretty face. For all that, I am not convinced that Dorian Gray was truly evil, although perhaps that depends on exactly what his sins were, as most of them are not described in anything but ambiguous detail. Murder is bad enough, of course, but his portrait was ravaged long before he first committed murder, and I would love to know what he did to cause that. But I also understand that Wilde purposely left Dorian’s sins ambiguous so that we could read into them what seems most sinful to us.
Interview with the Vampire is another novel that had a profound effect on me in my teen years; however, in reading it this time, I did not find much that seemed new. It was more like catching up with an old friend, and being comforted by their not being changed. That said, it was easy to fall in love again with Louis and his searching soul, to be shocked anew by Lestat’s rage, and intrigued again by the ethereal, placid beauty of Armand. All these immortals, locked together in hatred, and of course in love.
You must remember that Anne Rice turned vampire stories around, long before it was fashionable for vampires to hate themselves. She was the one to ask, what if vampires are not actually evil? What if a vampire loathed his existence, how would he endure? Louis’ story of endurance and detachment and defeat is still heartbreaking. Oh, the angst! Only in Rice’s hands it is skilful and believable, and never maudlin. I never cared for vampires until I read this, and I still don’t really care for them if they are not Anne Rice’s vampires, nuanced and searching, just like ordinary humans only they live forever. I find the current crop of vampire/human romances basically the most boring thing on earth. Give me the ‘happily ever after’ instead, when immortality proves a bore, when the lovers end up loathing each other, when times change and the world changes but personalities don’t. Falling in love is easy; staying together forever is not.
What will I read next? It's a mystery!
So I did. The Picture of Dorian Gray was actually the second successful mission of this operation. The first was Emotionally Weird, by Kate Atkinson. (I am sticking with rereading old favourites until I am ready to attempt new books.) Words cannot describe how much I love this damn book. It is a hilarious campus novel, set at the University of Dundee in 1972, but interwoven with the present and the past. It is the story of Effie and her mother who is not her mother, the strange history of their family, and the eccentric staff and students of the university’s English department, with the Vietnam War and electricity strikes creeping in at the edges. It is almost impossible to describe the way the narratives are linked, but it’s very meta. Ostensibly Effie and her mother are telling each other their stories, but Effie’s has many twists and turns and includes the detective novel she is writing for her Creative Writing course. You just have to read it to appreciate it.
You all already know how I feel about The Picture of Dorian Gray. I said in an email to idle persiflage that every time I read the novel I find something different in it, and so I did this time around. To me it seemed a very beautiful, simple story about redemption, the capacity of the human soul to do evil, the evils of undue influence, and how evil can wear a pretty face. For all that, I am not convinced that Dorian Gray was truly evil, although perhaps that depends on exactly what his sins were, as most of them are not described in anything but ambiguous detail. Murder is bad enough, of course, but his portrait was ravaged long before he first committed murder, and I would love to know what he did to cause that. But I also understand that Wilde purposely left Dorian’s sins ambiguous so that we could read into them what seems most sinful to us.
Interview with the Vampire is another novel that had a profound effect on me in my teen years; however, in reading it this time, I did not find much that seemed new. It was more like catching up with an old friend, and being comforted by their not being changed. That said, it was easy to fall in love again with Louis and his searching soul, to be shocked anew by Lestat’s rage, and intrigued again by the ethereal, placid beauty of Armand. All these immortals, locked together in hatred, and of course in love.
You must remember that Anne Rice turned vampire stories around, long before it was fashionable for vampires to hate themselves. She was the one to ask, what if vampires are not actually evil? What if a vampire loathed his existence, how would he endure? Louis’ story of endurance and detachment and defeat is still heartbreaking. Oh, the angst! Only in Rice’s hands it is skilful and believable, and never maudlin. I never cared for vampires until I read this, and I still don’t really care for them if they are not Anne Rice’s vampires, nuanced and searching, just like ordinary humans only they live forever. I find the current crop of vampire/human romances basically the most boring thing on earth. Give me the ‘happily ever after’ instead, when immortality proves a bore, when the lovers end up loathing each other, when times change and the world changes but personalities don’t. Falling in love is easy; staying together forever is not.
What will I read next? It's a mystery!