The aging process becomes all-powerful at the funeral of a loved one. It marks the containment of a life; there is no more to be added. When we welcom...moreThe aging process becomes all-powerful at the funeral of a loved one. It marks the containment of a life; there is no more to be added. When we welcome an infant, we celebrate all that there is to come; the possibilities are truly limitless.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's fable is about this journey in reverse, as a man of seventy years with the language capabilities, interests, and the physical infirmities familiar to old age, begins his life in 1860's Baltimore, the first child of Mr. and Mrs. Button. He is an old man with a long white beard sandwiched in a hospital nursery crib complaining of the crying babies all around him.
As the years pass, Benjamin seeks fun and frivolity while his wife of forty is appropriately mature, staid, and critical of his behavior. But what is he to do? His energy and zest for life is at its peak, so he enrolls in Harvard and leads the football team to an overwhelming victory over Yale. There is the desire to attend preparatory school, and then kindergarten, and soon he is too young for anything but a crib and a diet of milk. Finally, he remembers nothing...a blank slate with all memories washed clean, as we imagine an infant's mind might be.
Our imaginations and empathic responses are quickened when reading THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. We may initially wonder what it would be like if physical prowess were optimally coupled with mature thinking, but ultimately the process of aging backwards is be too foreign to our experience, though interesting to contemplate.
The stages of the aging body, while unwelcome at times, are reliable and predictable truths to us, but it's safe and fun to play with this reality when it's between the covers of a book. Highly Recommended.(less)
Harold Bloom says that the United States does not have a single national epic, but three very diverse works: MOBY-DICK, "Leaves of Grass", and "Advent...moreHarold Bloom says that the United States does not have a single national epic, but three very diverse works: MOBY-DICK, "Leaves of Grass", and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" with Ahad not being someone we love while Walt and Huck are. This tome is a classic with unforgetable prose, atmospheric perfection, and universal truths.
Three chapters in particular (42, 119, 132) display the epic's transcendental truths, Ahab's religious beliefs, and the strength of his identity. These themes are the core of the story for me. The purpose of living is to fight the inevitability of death with never ending DEFIANCE. "Thou canst blind; but I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes."
"...let me be then towed to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!" Captain Ahab only finally gives up the struggle with his mortality to its representative in the novel, the whale.
Ishmael will survive the disaster of the Pequod. He is buoyed up to ultimate safety by Queequeg's empty coffin, a remnant of their affection.
Chapter 122: "Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What's the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don't want thunder; we want RUM; give us a glass of RUM. Um, um, um!"
FINIS to MOBY-DICK and SALUTE to Herman Melville!(less)
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER is Mark Twain's final novel published in nineteen-sixteen. Twain wrote the majority of the work between eighteen-ninety and ni...moreTHE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER is Mark Twain's final novel published in nineteen-sixteen. Twain wrote the majority of the work between eighteen-ninety and nineteen-ten, the year of his death leaving several versions of an ending. Albert Paine had sole possession of Twain's unfinished work and chose the ending of this edition.
While writing this commentary on man's existence, his moral sense, and the refutation of religious dogma, Twain suffered great loses. Three of his four children died along with his beloved wife, coupled with his own declining health and mental energy. These life scars brought deep reflection of human nature and religious hypocrisy. The result is a fable illustrating the futility of life and man's failing to see reality.
Twain states that it is strange that man has not discovered that the contents of life are only dreams, fictions, and visions. One example is a God that could make happy children but doesn't, who could have made good ones, but instead makes them bad, who could have offered an extended life, but instead cuts it short. He questions a God who gives his angels painless lives, but heaps miseries of the mind and body on children, who mouths justice but invented hell, and who frowns upon crimes, but has committed them all himself.
The author criticizes man for not using the only weapon against the evils of life...that is laughter, the only thing that can blow apart and reduce to atoms the abuse of power, money, and influence against the poor.
These observations are made through the story of several boys growing up in Austria in the Middle Ages. THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER is a relative of Satan, and he takes on the family name as well. Satan, then, is the observer of man and the explainer of the Universe in this fable about ultimate truths.
Clearly a deviation from the young Twain, but then, don't all thinkers with age look at life differently, casting aside the scales of innocence from their eyes? Highly Recommended!
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