Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

I am off to a relaxing week with friends and will be finishing this book (and starting the Ann Patchett). Sorry I have been slow to post here -- I was just noticing how busy I have been, which is indicated by the number of shoes stacked up under my desk.

Elizabeth and I were JUST talking last night about the fact that you'd suggest the cabin next year.

I'm in.

I think this book is full of little gifts like this one for anyone who chooses to google/unwrap them.

And skillfully sewn in, too, so that you don't HAVE to know about the pigeon thing to have it evoke feelings. The important part about the pigeons is how his mother felt about them. If we take the time to research it, then we learn that it's peculiar to la noblesse.

I am beginning to see that some of the point of this book is to critique the critiquers -- to expose the biases of thinkers like de Tocqueville by contrasting them with the grittier reality of surviving and thriving in a new nation.

I, for example, am a huge opera fan but I can understand why that might take a back seat to, you know, eating and stuff.

OMG this is SO de Tocqueville (161):

No matter how strong their religious sentiments, or their passion about the reform of criminals, the Americans quickly revealed themselves to be obsessed with trade and money and beyond the walls of that particular cell they simply could no tree anything that diminished their enthusiasm for self-congratulation. They had got their hands on a mighty continent from which the least of them could, by dint of some effort, extract unlimited wealth. There being so much to be extracted it scarcely mattered how of if they were governed, because there is no need to argue when there is plenty for all. The energy put into this quest for wealth left little room for anything one might think of as culture, and so marked was this lack that I would always, in speaking of the wealthier families, use the English term middle class and never bourgeoisie. There was, as they were continually pleased to tell me, no aristocracy required.

Also made me think of West of Here's portrayal of Manifest Destiny.

OK. First, Lord Migraine is the best nickname of ALL TIME for an annoying boss.

Some of my absolute favorite passages, so far. (I try to keep track of the spots I think will be important for talking about later.)

p. 128

Toward me he played the icy master, perhaps not understanding that while I owed Monsieur de Tilbot my life, I had not sold myself into slavery. I was a free man, more American than any of these bankers and merchants who took their cue from Migraine and treated me like scum.

p. 133 -- (There is a companion passage where Parrot talks about Lord Migraine interrogating the Americans within an inch of their life that is great)

My companions, he said, I wrote, are nothing if not charming but it is already clear that the Americans carry national pride altogether too far. I doubt whether it is possible to draw from them the least truth unfavorable to their country. Most of them boast about it without discernment and with an aggressiveness that is disagreeable to strangers and shows but little intelligence. In general it seems to me that they magnify objects in the way of people who are not accustomed to seeing great things.

p. 137 -- (I love the way Parrot talks about his intimacy with Mathilde. It's lovely. If obsessive.)

You would say I was the perfect lover for a madwoman, and I confess to an attraction to that shadowed liveliness, those sudden passions, twisting stairs, violent updrafts that can break the wings of eagles in the tumult of a storm .That species never frightened me, although perhaps it should have. Did I drink too deeply from the pools of their grief?

p .139 -- (I thought for sure I was reading about Donald Trump.)

She stretched a tiny canvas and made his big nose bigger and emphasized the way it curved to almost touch his upper lip. She paid loving attention to his strange hair, the gray shadow across the top of his forehead where he had shaved his widow's peak and left a hairline black as boot polish. Yet to think of a hairline is to distort the picture for, by dint of comb and much pomade, Mr. Eckerd made of his hair a kind of rug, terminating in a neat set of twisted tassels on his noble brow. ... All the pride of this imaginary metropolis resided in the very direct and fearless eyes.

Mo sent me a text last week too - -totally works.

We have a quorum! And given your post about amazon, Patty, I will be buying it at my favorite local bookstore, Book Table, whose tag line is 'fiercely independent since 1992' (or thereabouts).

I read this review and thought this would also be a fun one to read together...

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/20/1371726...

Abel Magwitch -- the convict. What made me think of it is their escape down the river. At first he is a shadowy, scary, mysterious figure, although Parrot's narration already casts a jaded eye on him in that piece of the book. But then I was wondering if he might not be Parrot's greatest benefactor and if, with time, Parrot might come to know that. And the connection between him and Olivier is mysterious, though early in the book I couldn't help but wonder if he is actually Olivier's father.

These are definitely two characters set up for us to compare and contrast, to great effect in the opening 150 pages or thereabouts (I am on the passage section right now).

And I agree -- they are both deeply individual and forged by the time and place in which they are born. I think some of this connects to philosophy at the time, though I'd have to drag out my Montaigne and others to really get a handle on it. Montaigne very much suits Parrot. As for Olivier, I think... Cartesian.

I wish I could read faster! But so enjoying the ride. I can't wait to see how they feel about the democratizing forces. :)

Also - does the one armed man seem to be anything like the mysterious man in Great Expectations, Abel Magwitch?

I've been holding back on comparing the levels of change happening now as well...! Trying to just enjoy the book for what it is and not be too quick to draw comparisons.

And thinking about that quote and how it applies as I read. Olivier is SO principled, but also myopic about his class and how it relates to the rest of the world -- and Parrot is SO enmeshed in the moment to moment survival reality of his life...

Nihilist, how? I see some of the usual issues with a 12 year old being THAT emotionally aware that one finds in any work of historical fiction (or maybe even any work of fiction written from a child's POV) but what I'm seeing most is someone jaded a bit by their own experience -- also, perhaps resentful in a way that only capitalism can breed?

While I am not as far along as others I thought I would tap out a few thoughts I am having as I read.

What hit me the most is that we have two characters coming of age during a time of such complete change that it's hard to fathom. Full, sweeping groups of occupations, people, trades... gone, in Olivier's case, and in Parrot's, being surrounded by subterfuge, the notion that something was wrong but not being able to figure out quite what. Just -- imagining the impact of such massive change on the lives of everyone, for thousands of miles, like an earthquake and its impact zone.

I thought I wasn't going to like Parrot because he started out talking about Rousseau's social contract as it applies to fathers and their children. Now I see that while Olivier's voice, while more comfortable for me in its tone and approach, is not as real to me as describing the humor of the Sunday Ablution, or the amazement at the one-armed man coming to the river to bathe with them. Also, it seems to me that Olivier could do with someone like Parrot in his life (and vice versa), and perhaps this is what we are supposed to see.

I pulled out a couple of paragraphs about the characters' sense of self that I liked...

p. 57: "If you were ever a boy you will remember the worries of a boy and how they swarm around you, and if I have had no reason to name mine for you until now, it does not mean they were not my constant companions. A boy's life, like a bird's life, is not what is generally assumed. For bird examples, watch the whitethroats gorging in the bramble patches, the warblers gluttoning among the blackberries, the blackcaps swinging off the rose hips, all in a panic to get fat before the summer ends. I, for my part, was forever in a fret lest my daddy die like my mother and leave me with no one to care for me, no one to save me from my cheeky nature, my mimicking, my fear of strangers on the road or in the woods at night, tramps, scamps, hermits, men who put paper noses on their face to frighten boys."


contrasted with p, 70-1
"Yet the curtain had fallen on gore and glory, and we found ourselves in a theater where we were revealed as poor pale creatures, blinking in the artless light. Monstrosities and giants no longer walked the bloody streets. Malesherbes, Diderot, Rousseau. The great men were dead. Danton, even Robespierre. Do not take my word. Look at the works of our painters -- the people were dwarfed by nature. As for the novels, the characters were blown like fallen leaves, without volition, not worth reading. Worse, we were overshadowed by our own family trees. I was a Garmont, but a lowly judge advocate. My colleagues saw that I was slight and myopic. They could not imagine the secret life of my body or my mind. I was thought reticent, even cold, but I was ablaze with violent contradiction."

I am zooming through this one. The voices are amazing; collecting thoughts for the first few chapters to post tomorrow morning. :)

I am so GLAD we are doing group reads again. Picking it up today. :)

(Oh, man now I'm nervous and actually have to remember my lines. ;)

I LOVE power tools. This is not something everyone knows about me.

When I bought the house I asked them to leave the fully functional carpentry workshop in place. No go. No table saw for Shel.)

Elizabeth, I can't wait to see you at the show and after party. Because there is no moderation there, either. It will be a glorious mess.

I have to get P&O and will join as soon as it's in my hands.

You can't HANDle the TRUTH. Sorry. That one just slipped right out.

That Parrot and Olivier book sounds interesting. I am in. I have been reading super-duper-heavy-universal-truth stuff for a long time now.

Time for some STORIES.

I'm in on Ubik too.

Elizabeth wrote: "So, as a result of this amazing literary family, I have read a lot of the fiction files authors' library. Evison, McCrae, Loory, Pecqueur and Kilgallon. I'm sure that there are more authors and mo..."

I wish we could Like posts here. Because I love this one.

How about Ubik? I've got a pretty serious thing for PKD lately, and Ray Bradbury as well.

When I turned 17, my boyfriend Mark showed up at my door with a pile of about 10 books.

On a date the night before, during which he played me Brown Eyed Girl and danced with me in what had to be the most perfect romantic moonlight EVER, he asked me which beats were my favorite, knowing how much I liked e e cummings and ferlinghetti. I think he jus assumed I would know the beats.

I still have a lot of those books. The Portable Beat Reader, Collected Poems, 1947-1980, Naked Lunch... and several more.

One of the best gifts ever.

For my birthday this year someone I care about a lot gave me My Reading Life -- a signed edition. It was a thoughtful gift.