"The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination."

 Victor Hugo, Les Miserables. Part of the reason I'm in love with my new bookends ends, pictured here, is because they remind me of him. The mind from which sprang Quasimodo, Esmerelda, Eponine, Jean Valjean, Javert and Claude Frollo. And the statues have always fascinated me on their own, the unsightly flock of what may appear to be God's mistakes holding their sequestered look out from the tops of churches.

 Or perhaps I just really love my new bookends that likely weigh as much as a real one on Notre Dame, and was looking for a reason to post about them.

A Stop Into a Bookstore

The "Mockinbird" cover I saw

 I'm traveling for work, in Albany, New York, staying just outside of the city in an oddly situated area that seems at once intensely rural and endlessly suburban and commercial. From my hotel, it is a ten minute drive (no sidewalks for walking) to the main road, past an airport, and cornfields, instantly pouring out onto a developed suburban commercial strip. Nothing is familiar here, and it's an odd feeling.

 Thank a higher power, I was able to lose myself in a Barnes and Noble I found in a mall. It called to me across the food court, and I decided to slip in for a moment. Always dangerous, always rewarding. Always a joy.

 Naysayers certainly abound nowadays regarding the future of the book industry. If the future generation isn't reading as much as it should, or the industry as we know it is doomed for a future consisting only of the electronic reader and e-book, I don't mind.

 Because I know those people could not be more wrong. And there's nothing like a trip into a book store--independent or chain-- to tell you how wrong they are.

 The first thing the stores offers you when you walk in now is the display of their e-reader device, the Nook.

I own a Sony Reader, and love it. I'm constantly adding new titles to my e-library and reading works off the device. But while the future of the print industry concerns the e-reader greatly, the printed page will never fall out of style.

 I decide to take a stroll through fiction, knowing I won't buy anything, can't. Don't need to. I visit some old friends, Michael Cunningham and Joyce Carol Oates for starters, marveling at new paperback covers of novels I own and love. I pick up a new paperback edition of Stephen King's "On Writing," and notice that, in the back, the King has included a new recommended reading list next to the one he included on his first writing. I stop a few minutes by the table displays of required reading and classics, thinking of how one of my favorite professors in college once remarked how he would love to teach a class on different editions' covers of novels. I almost buy a copy of "To Kill A Mockingbird" and yet another copy of "Dracula" because of their absolutely intriguing new covers. But I stop myself.

 I find Shirley Jackson on the shelf, completely by chance. I picked up an fascinatingly awesome edition of "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" and I come dangerously close to buying the book on the cover alone. Knowing full well I have a copy somewhere. I see novels I've never heard of -- "Empire," "Jesus Boy," "The Meaning of Night" and "The Monster of Florence" and immediately jot them down in my phone, meaning to add them to my to-read list after having been pulled in by their covers and printed description. And before I leave, making it out of there purchase-less, by the skin of my teeth, I consider buying a hardcover volume of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe (now that, I do need.)

 I leave feeling rejuvenated, eager to go and grab a corner with the novel I'm reading (John Irving's "Last Night in Twisted River") and read. There's no feeling like a bookstore gives you. While Internet e-book shops and the like give me something of a similar feeling searching the covers and descriptions, I know at once how perfectly the two worlds fit together, and will continue on into the future, hand-in-hand.

Who I Write Like, Apparently....

I do believe I am several weeks late to the "I Write Like" bandwagon. For those of you who do not know, or may have been away from your computer the last few hazy summer weeks, "I Write Like" is a website which analyzes pieces of your writing you may copy and paste into its analyzer, and it spits out a match as to who its machine thinks you write like.

Margaret Atwood, quite famously, found out she writes like Stephen King, and announced this via her Twitter account. (Note to self, even though you are nowhere near the awesomeness of Atwood, you need to get a Twitter account on which to follow her.)

Picture: Tulu, 3x6.net

So I decided I had to have some fun with this. I cut, pasted a paragraph from my last post on "A Mirror for Witches," and found out the paragraph which starts off "And throughout the novel the voice never stops..." apparently writes like the master of horror and the macabre, H.P. Lovecraft.

And a post from my other blog on the crypts of the Capuchin monks in Rome apparently reads like Dan Brown, though I am hoping that is only for the copious references to Rome, monks and crypts. I'm scared to test some of my fiction... perhaps I'll gather up the courage, soon. But for now I am content with the Lovecraft comparison.

Who do you write like?

"A Mirror for Witches" by Esther Forbes

"She would always explain to him that she wanted no other God than Lucifer and no Heaven, for where her parents were and her foster father and her dear husband-- there with them was her Paradise, not in Heaven with the cold angels singing psalms forever to an angry and awful God..." (199)

Sometimes, a book just comes out of nowhere, and sends you reeling. Up until several months ago, I had no idea that "A Mirror for Witches," a novel about hysteria in 17th century New England, existed. I knew the author, what I falsely would have claimed to be "quite well." You likely would be hard pressed to find a person who has gone through the American educational system and is not at least aware of our writer, as at one or many times in grammar, middle and even high school, children are assigned to read Esther Forbes' "Johnny Tremain," a seemingly all-American tale of the adolescence and the Revolutionary war which established the country of the United States as it exists today.

But I digress.

Sadly, Forbes appears to be solely remembered for "Johnny Tremain," while having written about 11 novels between 1926 and 1954. And that is nothing to say against the novel of young Mr. Tremain-- however, after reading "A Mirror for Witches" it is all at once brilliantly clear that the work is a tremendous feat, and one so easy to have fallen through the cracks of time and the literary canon, though the novel itself has never been out of print.

Published in 1928, a full 25 years before Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," Forbes' novel is at once historical, personal and timeless, in each and every sense of those words. From the opening pages, Forbes throws the reader into the world of Doll Bilby, a girl mistreated and abused by this world at every step of her life, in the form of a historical document. Anyone who has read sermons or narratives of the time will likely recognize the capitalizations of many words we'd now consider odd and the long, flowingly specific chapter titles as birthed right out of the era. While the reader may never be told who is telling us the story, this is a voice known all too well. As the title page so puts it: "A Mirror for Witches; In which is reflected the Life, Machinations, and Death of a Famous DOLL BILBY, who, with a more than feminine perversity, preferred a Demon to a Mortal Lover. Here is also told how and why a Righteous and Most Awful JUDGEMENT befell her, destroying both Corporeal Body and Immortal Soul."

And throughout the novel the voice never stops, and is relentless until the very last page, creating an uncanny sense of sympathy and injustice in the reader, one which likely would not have been so strongly achieved had the narrative constantly sided with his or her subject. Though the events as described by the narrating religious hysteric happened some few, short hundreds of years ago, the echoes are heard throughout American history, of the oppression of many others. And Forbes' style is not genius simply because of her choice of narrative voice. The narrative itself creates, in tune with the voice, remarkable moments or irony, sadness and poignancy.

Born in Brittany to parents literally burned at the stake before their young daughter's eyes, Doll is rescued by a kind sea captain who takes her back to his family in America, in an effort to try and preserve whatever may be left of her innocence, or at least give her a childhood befitting a child. In the new world, Doll meets a vibrant cast; from her viscously jealous step-mother, to Zacharias Zelley, who "preached the Word of God. But in time fell from God..." (19) and "[said] unseemly prayer-- not like those one hears in church...Zelley talked to God as you might talk to a friend." (197) But perhaps the most debate-worthy player who comes into Doll's life does so when "Hell laughs and a Witch meets that which she has long sought" (109) and the man we are told is her demon lover comes into her life.

In summary, there is a great deal to admire in this novel, and a great deal I was left to wonder about, with few tidy-- if any-- answers given. The individual power and achievement of the book alone is enough for me to want to get my hands on what else Esther Forbes may have written and not be remembered for. "A Mirror for Witches" is a spectacular novel of oppression, whom and what society decides to often cast out, prejudice and the religious zealotry mashed together to try and justify it, and our American history which all too often repeats itself.

Butterfly in the sky.... I can go twice as high.

It all started with a t-shirt. I was somewhere-- the mall? the art festival? the pride parade? walking down Elmwood Avenue?-- and someone passed me. I cannot tell you this person's height, weight, race or gender or even what her or his face may have looked like. Because their noticeably older, perhaps even by now vintage, t-shirt caught my eye and threw me down memory lane.

And this is what the t-shirt said:


Not one to favor logos on my clothing, I immediately knew I wanted that shirt. What a terrific reminder, a way to carry a thing of your childhood with you. Years had passed since I saw an episode and, I came to realize, I had no idea if the show was still on the air. It better be, I thought, because if public television can accomplish anything, running a show which promotes reading and teaches children (and those adults who pay attention) the importance of being a reader.

And I learned a few things. First, the basics. "Reading Rainbow" was a half hour program which aired on PBS from 1983 until 2006. Of course, each episode centered around a children's book, and host Levar Burton's adventures related to the theme of said featured book. Each episode featured kids giving their own reviews of books, and often featured a celebrity narrating a children's book.

But what I found most puzzling was the culprit for the show's demise. In this NPR article, John Grant, the head of programming at "Reading Rainbow" (and my own) home station WNED Buffalo, was quoted as saying that in 2006 no one was willing to fund the program any longer. Grant alluded to a shift he viewed in educational programming, a "...change [that] started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration... which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading-- like phonics and spelling." He goes on to say how the Department of Education puts its funding behind teaching kids how to read, but not why, which was the mission of "Reading Rainbow." What Grant describes as "...the love of reading- [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read."

Now. I am not suggesting that George Bush killed "Reading Rainbow." But the connections, you have to admit, are that odd kind of funny. Certainly, children must have the need of being taught how to read filled, and in a time and world where we fight huge numbers of illiteracy among our youth, there is nothing more important.

But. I remember being a kid and loving to read, loving each trip to the library with my mother, and how it felt to have that love confirmed, and validated, each afternoon when Levar Burton was on the air. What I had found, what my mother had shown me, was important and would be for life. While I certainly didn't need a television show to tell me that, I didn't hurt. And I am sure that is all it takes to keep some children turning the pages. Over the last ten years, children (and us all) have been incredibly lucky with runaway, bestselling hits like Harry Potter and the "Twilight" books. But no matter how wonderful any of those books may or may not be, there is more to reading, and more for children to be taught about reading, than lies in Hogwarts.

"The Tattooed Girl" Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates’ “The Tattooed Girl” appeared to me, upon first reading, to be a novel about the randomness of life interrupting discipline. Much of the life that interrupts the discipline of the novel, the discipline of Oates’ protagonist Joshua Seigl, is death. In fact, the process of decline that Seigl goes through in the novel often contrasts with the very disciplined nature of the person that he is; this man who has spent his life as an academic, an intellectual, a writer, in the world of logic and a literary career that gave him acclaim and celebrity. With his diagnosis of a nerve disease in the opening of the novel, Seigl is faced with two situations with his becoming ill and meeting Alma, or possibly one that propels the other, which essentially both force him to question his life of discipline and concede to that discipline.

The relationship between Seigl and the Alma, who he meets in a bookstore and is instantly enamored with, enough to offer her a job as his assistant, is, needless to say, quite complicated. There is a connection between them that appears to transcend class, intellectual status and even ethnicity. Instantly, Seigl is attracted to her on multiple levels upon their meeting, before even speaking to her. “..he wasn’t a man who took much notice of other people, even sexually attractive young people.” (75) One may read this initial sexual attraction to her as the reason he speaks to her, but in their conversation and seeing her more closely, there is an almost visceral, mercurial connection of empathy he feels for her. “The girl turned blank blinking eyes toward Seigl, wiping her nose with the edge of her hand… The mark on her cheek was unfortunate: it made her look smudged, despoiled. Your impulse was to reach out and brush the blemish away.” (74) It is through this attraction, this connection, that Seigl invites Alma into his home and employ, fully aware of the differences between them. In fact, Seigl is willing to disregard his caution even after experiencing her more simple ways of thinking about the world, in their conversation over the existence and persecution of witches, when Alma cannot reconcile the existence of people persecuted as witches and the stereotypical witches of popular myth.

In a novel that leaves much to individual interpretation, I read Seigl’s physical decline as something, even with all his intellect, he was unprepared for. I do not believe that Seigl and Alma’s relationship was as simple as one in which he overlooked all else—especially Alma’s deep seated prejudices—in order to have a relationship with her, to understand her. Seigl has spent his career seeking to understand those familiar but distant to him; for instance, his signature work is a novel based on his grandparents’ experiences, not his own, and he works heavily in his translations, translating the work of others into his own language. While Seigl struggles to understand Alma, he is at the same time struggling to understand his physical state, his illness, what is wrong with him. “Seigl persisted. “Surely there must be a gene. There’s a gene for everything now.” (44) And it is this unknown, this unnamed illness, that throws such confusion into Seigl’s life. He cannot understand what is bringing about his decline and death, and unable to deal with that uncertainty he turns to his work, to the complicated relationship he has with Alma.

If one is to read the novel as Oates’ commenting on the nature of decline, on the unexpected, unknowable way in which our lives can come to end and for which we can never properly, for lack of a better word, prepare for, one may also read the novel as a comment on death’s random and memorial aspects. If death can occur from this unexpected, causeless disease that cumulates in a random and final ending of a life, then what is left behind—in terms of one’s life’s work and the people one has affected—is equally difficult to define. Throughout the novel there are multiple references to literature and other work as the product of people’s lives that may not always find an audience. For instance, upon meeting Alma, Seigl comments that “[there is] Nothing so sad as unwanted books. Like spurned hearts.” (74) This image of these books, the product of people’s minds and lives as possibly not accomplishing their task of reaching and being appreciated by others is especially relevant to Seigl’s life and death. Seigl is a writer who has during his life achieved fame and acclaim, and these images represent all the others who, like him, tried and were unable to achieve what he did. And that is even not to say that, after Seigl has gone, his work will continue to endure. The novel leaves that question up to imagination, whether or not, after all that was Seigl’s life, his work will endure. An image that occurs during the scene in which Seigl dies perfectly illustrates this idea: “’This we can leave in the grass!’ Seigl took the cane from her and flung it aside. Days later it would be discovered amid the grave markers of strangers and brought to the cemetery groundskeeper.” (282) In this instance, Seigl is willfully tossing aside what he practically needs, and lets the cane simply fall, to be found by others who may or may not be able to interpret what it means, or the story behind it. Much like his work, his published books.

Likewise, Seigl’s death is described as a sudden, ultimate event. “His face was contorted, almost unrecognizable… she saw him loose his balance and fall backward… like a dead weight…” (283) In other words, at Seigl’s end, he changes briefly from the person he was and then dies. Similarly, what Seigl does leave behind in the novel, Alma, is equally unsure what to make of his life, of what has happened. “…when she woke each time he was still dead.” (287) She also appears unable to comprehend his religion at his funeral “(A strange chapel it was: no cross…)” (288) In a sense, Seigl and her relationship with him has given Alma a new life, although how that life will be is not defined in the novel. Like his work and the possibilities of Seigl being remembered throughout history, the effect he has had on Alma is equally ambiguous, unknown, and left up to whatever random fate the future may bring.

Madame Bovary

Recently, I have been thinking quite a bit about Gustave Flaubert’s stylistically gorgeous Madame Bovary, first published in 1856. Over my years in college, I had to read the work no less than four times. Here, I have revisited some of the criticism I wrote while studying the novel. Each time I read the novel, my position evolved on what came in second on Time Magazine’s 2007 survey of writers on the greatest novel of all time (second only to that other great piece of literature about such a tragic heroine, Anna Karenina). I am never sure whether or not I, for lack of a better word, like the novel, but it is one always prone to great debate.

What I reacted to most strongly upon my most recent reading of Madame Bovary is what I have reacted to each time I have read the text. That is where, exactly, my sympathies lie among the characters. Be it too simple, but with themes as emotionally resounding and direct as Flaubert’s, my initial reaction is always a gut level response to the characters’ fidelity and morality—even though I believe that one must objectively evaluate the characters in order to be true to the text. On my first reading, I blindly accepted that Emma is a victim of her situation and circumstance, that she is the victim of her youthful and innocent indulgence of romance novels, and that she is in a position where she cannot divorce the husband she is unhappy with easily, if possible. On my second reading, I, for lack of a better term, turned on Emma. I had not previously not felt for Charles; but reading the novel a second time, I had very little to no sympathy for Emma, and could not feel sorrier for Charles and his own innocent and misguided (but nevertheless true) feelings. Beginning during the third reading and ending in the foruth, I came to the general feeling that the characters are all the things that are said about them. At once, Emma is an innocent, a child, passionate, greedy, selfish, immature, a victim, pathetic, a mother, a victimizer, manipulative and vulnerable. And Charles is at the same time awkward, honest, sincere, a victim, lustful, true, misguided, innocent, and sympathetic. In other words, instead of fate, as Charles theorizes at the novel’s end, it is the characters’ circumstances and personalities that claim credit for their lives’ result.

What stops Emma from being what she is often wholly mistaken for—a petty, unlikable character with no morals or true feelings—are the circumstances of her society and time. When evaluating what kind of person Emma Bovary is, one has to keep in mind that the tools of liberation—being able to freely divorce her husband, or gain more real world experience—are not available to her. Yes, that is not to say that it would be impossible for her to have left Charles—as she does plan with Rodolphe to run away together at one point—but the social consequences of her society’s circumstances must be kept in mind, and this limits her ability to act in virtually every way a modern eye would deem acceptable. That is not to say, however, that she is exempt from judgment because of her world. She is not, and many emotional reactions and actions she commits cannot be excused on the grounds of her being a victim of society; but, rather, a weak person. For example, the embarrassment Emma considers Charles to be at the ball—an event Emma would not have gone to if not for the hardworking husband she considers an embarrassment—cannot be the fault of anything other than petty, ugly feelings toward her husband. Yes, Emma’s unhappiness can be attributed to where society has placed her; but, the fact that she revels in this unhappiness, and takes it out on Charles, cannot be so easily written off. Also, there is the issue of Emma’s romance novels. While during Emma’s time there may not have been as many respectable female role models in literature as there are today, it is hard to imagine that nowhere in her reading or life experience did Emma come across a sensible, more realistic depiction of life than those she idealizes in her novel. This issue brings up, too, questions on the influence of art, and the extents of the effects of art on those who absorb it. Impossible to ever concretely say one way or the other, one can be relatively confident in the notion that while Emma’s novels did not create her fate, or make her the way she is, they did not help and likely nurtured dispositions and tendencies she already, inherently had in her person.

I know that there is no way to hypothetically know ho w Emma would be under different and/or more modern circumstances, but from her conduct in the novel, one can theorize. For instance, one can look at the intensity with which Emma burns through her passions. Over the course of the novel, we are told of Emma’s past devotion to her religious faith, we witness her all-consuming devotion to find the imaginary, idealized romantic love that her books once lied to her about, and we witness brief returns to religious devotion, at points in the novel when Emma actually feels, or more likely feels she should feel, guilty about her indiscretions. These she quickly consumes and moves on, in her pursuit for, if not happiness, contentment, as it is debatable whether or not she knows what true happiness is, and is never satisfied. From these actions, one can read superficiality that likely would follow Emma to whatever time period and social status she might possibly inhabit. In other words, one must consider the circumstances beyond Emma’s control in casting any judgment on her, or deciding her innocence, but while she may be on some terms innocent, she is guilty of other offenses. These range from the ridiculousness of her comparing herself to a martyr when she can’t have sex with the man she has fallen into lust with, to the same behavior she displays after Charles fails to cure Hippolyte, to when she throws herself intensely back into her affair with Rodolphe, in order to either punish what she feels is her failure of a husband, or search for what she feels is a better, instant gratification for herself, or hybrid of those elements. Additionally, Emma is guilty of negligence when it comes to her family. It is enough that she displays such an uncaring attitude toward her daughter and husband, but she cannot think outside herself enough to be part of a family. For example, she is disappointed in the sex of her daughter, as she feels men have more opportunities than women, and afterward she simply accepts the disappointment, and fails to realize that her daughter is a human being who needs a mother. Emma also acts flamboyantly careless as she places the need to buy her lovers presents ahead of the needs of her family, while she secretly plunges her family into massive debt, without being able to comprehend the consequences which eventually destroy her family and leave the only surviving member, her daughter, to a life of work and drudgery that Emma would never have tolerated for herself in life. It is in these actions that while Emma can correctly be labeled an immature innocent there are also elements of her character which cannot be excused.

Conversely, while Charles may indirectly fuel some of Emma’s actions by fueling her instabilities and insecurities—if only by not being the idealized version of a husband Emma never drops from her mind—I nevertheless consider him the most sympathetic of the characters in a novel of sympathetic characters. In one response paper to the novel I wrote in college, I was asked, after making that comment, whether I thought Flaubert intended Charles to be the most sympathetic character in the novel. Honestly, I am unsure. On an extreme end, I think that if Flaubert intended Emma to be entirely sympathetic and Charles the awkward, bumbling, incompetent joke of a husband Emma often considers him, the novel can be deemed a failure (for that point.) However, I do not believe the novel to be a failure in any sense of the word. For one can read the novel as an objective character study shown through the eyes of a subjective subject. Any exaggerated aspects of Charles’ character, therefore, are the fault of Emma’s subjectivity, and not a deficiency in his character.

Cover picture from High Valley Books

James Joyce's "The Dead"

After much deliberation, I decided that the first literature I would write about here would be James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” from Dubliners. I first read the story two years ago for a class, and recently watched John Huston’s 1987 film adaptation. I recent revisited some criticism I had written of it for my class—and here is it. “The Dead” my favorite thing I’ve ever read of Joyce; a beautiful, haunting piece of national identity, interpersonal relationship’s and the heavy cold that falls between. I have not read Dubliners in full, but most, very soon.

Joyce’s “The Dead,” can be read on several different levels. However, I predominantly read the text as a narrative on a man who does not understand women, a man who does not understand his country, and a critique on the limits of art and intellectual hypocrisy. For in the events described in the story—Gabriel attending his (female) relatives’ party and returning home with his wife, Gretta—we are shown a man, attending to a day of simple social tasks (going to a party, going home with his wife) in a world that he, we are repeatedly shown, does not understand. And his world just so happens to be comprised of his homeland; Ireland, women and those who have come before him.

On a very visceral level, “The Dead” chronicles how awkward the protagonist of Gabriel is with the opposite sex, and how he appears not to understand the women in his life. He shares exchanges with a variety of women—his relatives, their maids, an intellectual equal, and his wife—and they each inform him of his lack of understanding in different, very direct ways. Early on, he fumbles an exchange with Lily, being so bold as to assume she has or will have a relationship with a man that will lead to marriage, which offends her; “’…I suppose we’ll be going to your wedding one of these fine day with your young man, eh?’” (1947). Gabriel goes on to interact with a variety of female characters; all representative of a range of social classes and dispositions. As stated, he is awkward with Lily, a maid. He also fails, if you will (in terms of fumbling and failing to understand) an exchange with an intellectual/professional equal of his, Miss Ivors, another woman. In his dancing and exchange with Miss Ivors, he is confronted on a level closest to his understanding, by another apparent intellectual. By challenging what is, essentially, his patriotism, Miss Ivors threatens his identity, his intellectual standpoint. She tells him “’…haven’t you your own language…” (1954). In questioning his answers that he will vacation in another country, Ivors questions his language, and whether he has one. And, quite truthfully, Gabriel does not appear to have a language of his own. He does not pride himself on being Irish, and is so resentful of what he is (or what is expected of him, by those like Miss Ivors) he tells her “’I’m sick of my own country…’” (1954). These issues speak to the larger themes of the novel, the issues of the intellectual and artistic limits and hypocrisy. For Gabriel is an intellectual, a writer of book reviews. In these reviews, his art, he—assumedly—deals with literature and the goal of literature, which is to understand the human spirit. And yet, in his personal life as we are witnessed to in the novel, he fails to understand those most important in his life; his family, these women, even the acquaintance that intellectually rivals him. The exchange with Ivors is indicative of his lack of understanding his art and surrounding humanity and, at the same time, his nation. That he does not have his own language can mean he is not in tune with his ethnicity, and also that he does not have his own means of understanding humanity. That he does not have his own art to understand the world around him and the people in it, or that the art he does (his reviews) are detached, thoughts on others’ insights, and not his own.

Finally, the conclusion of the novel reveals how out of touch he is with both his wife and nation. Perhaps this is taking the two prospective themes too far, but if one were to symbolically characterize land or the earth, the common personification would be female; for example, the figure of a mother earth. This female image can work to link the two themes, that Gabriel does not understand the women and his homeland around him. In fact, the revelation that the song from the party has so affected Gretta because of a past, deceased lover is the most scathing criticism of Gabriel’s lack of understanding the opposite sex. For the revelation shows he understands not even his own wife, so much so that her heart so passionately belongs to another man, who is no longer living, and he knew nothing of this until the night we see in the story. The final, and what was to me the most striking, image of the story, of Gabriel’s thoughts turning to the snow “…falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried.” (1974) can be seen as a climax of the linking of these themes. Put simply, Gabriel does not understand his wife, as the man who holds her heart lies buried within the earth. Within the Ireland he does not understand, under a cold layer of thick snow. All of which is as detached from him as any true feeling is—whether it be the simple relating to another human being or woman through conversation, true intellectual and artistic expression, or the love of his wife.

Photo: BBC, David Lemming

An introduction...

I started this blog without having a purpose. One day last fall, I saw the rose in front of our house in the previous post, thought of the quote and wanted to do something with it. I keep another blog, of the more seasonal persuasion, and in October I was fully busy with that project. This didn't stop me from creating another blog here, with this title, because I felt I needed to; I could come up with a purpose later. Months passed, and each time I would think about this I hadn't the slightest opinion what I could do with this space. That is, until I graduated from college with a B.A. in English this past December.

What would I do with all this free time, I wondered? Since I will be taking time off before graduate school, what will I do with myself if I'm not constantly reading for a deadline at which I'd have to turn in massive papers written during the wee hours of the morning the day there were to be due? I love going on GoodReads.com as soon as I finish a book to write down my thoughts. Couldn't I do the same in a blog format, too?

So, I have decided to start this blog as an extension of my Good Reads profile and life as an English major. Herein will lie a place for all my thoughts on literature and anything related to the art and life of books. I hope, if I am so lucky as to have you as a reader, I don't bore you too often.