Lady Chatterley's Lover and Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
At this point, I've read a good bit of D.H. Lawrence, which maybe says something about me. Unlike his (sort-of) contemporaries Dickens, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, etc, where I read two or so books and call it good, Lawrence has entered a realm inhabited by a few authors - E.M. Forster, Jane Austen - who seem to call to me to read everything they've written. Of those, Lawrence is probably the most opaque. I don't find him especially easy to read or to understand, I don't sympathize immediately or strongly with his protagonists, but I keep coming back. Secretly, I think it's just him.
No matter that Lawrence looked like a slightly tubercular version of my boyfriend; I just love what Lawrence's books tell me about their author, about what he cared about and what he paid attention to in life. And I think it's Lawrence's obsessions with sex, beauty and the search for truth that get to me. Some authors write characters that you fall in love with. Lawrence writes a damn sexy omniscient third person narrator.
Of the two, I vastly preferred Lady Chatterley. It was much more straightforward than his other books, and I think he wrote it, in a sense, for people he knew, not for the general public. Women in Love was affecting in parts, but in the end, left me cold (that's a pun, but you have to read the book to get it.)
A Town Like Alice and The Chequerboard by Nevil Shute
Nevil Shute has also drawn me in, in the last few years. I read On the Beach as part of my post-apocalyptic kick, and then recognized the name on Alice in the dollar bin at Powell's. I adored A Town Like Alice. In was one of the most romantic books I've ever read. When a book gets you, really gets you, to think that the two aren't going to get together, and then they do...ah, magic. And the two - and Englishwoman and an Australian, thrown together in WW2 in the Phillipines - are wonderfully written characters. The Chequerboard was less moving, but engaging and powerful. It's basically a narrative diatribe against racism, with object lessons in the form of the four men in the story. It was written in 1947, which only makes me sadder to think how many more years of the kind of racism described were ahead. Things are very different now, which takes some of the air out of the story (think "Gentleman's Agreement") but it was good all the same.
Whew...and time to pick up a new book, now.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
The War of the Worlds
I happened to find a nice, somewhat old H.G. Wells collection at Powell's in the "new arrivals" section a few weeks back, and brought it home with me. I'd already read The Time Machine and liked it well enough, and this one also had The War of the Worlds and some short stories. I like a well put-together collection.
The War of the Worlds was a pretty incredible read, especially now, 120 or so years (can you believe it?) after it was written. It was fairly unsettling to read about aliens attacking a pre-automotive society, and the descriptions of horse-and-cart jams on unpaved roads as people try to escape the menace. It almost seemed unreal, as though someone today were trying very hard to write about that time...the absence of technology in the victims was conspicuous when compared to the aliens'. And the imagining of the aliens was all the more awing when you think of how few machines or mechanical devices there were to base them on. The aliens in their war-machines were described as being more like a brain controlling a body than like a man controlling a machine, which would have been a more apt simile, if there had been man-driven machines at the time - but there weren't!
I also loved the little idiosyncrasies of life back then, and the different notions that were so apparent. The narrator at one point describes himself as "Naked save for my water-soaked trousers and socks"...which would really not be considered naked these days. And I loved when the first man to see the cylinder from Mars wasn't believed because he was running around like a madman with no hat on his head. *gasp!*
Mrs. Elphinstone is a great character too...I laughed at how she "had never been out of England before...and seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the French and Martians might prove very similar."
Another gem of a sentence is when the narrator's brother finds that "It was no time for pugilistic chivalry." Quite so.
What I loved most about the book was how Wells wrote it like I would write a story of the destruction of civilization - about his friends and family and the place he lived, as though it were all happening to the author himself. And that, I think, is why it rings so eerily possible, even today.
The War of the Worlds was a pretty incredible read, especially now, 120 or so years (can you believe it?) after it was written. It was fairly unsettling to read about aliens attacking a pre-automotive society, and the descriptions of horse-and-cart jams on unpaved roads as people try to escape the menace. It almost seemed unreal, as though someone today were trying very hard to write about that time...the absence of technology in the victims was conspicuous when compared to the aliens'. And the imagining of the aliens was all the more awing when you think of how few machines or mechanical devices there were to base them on. The aliens in their war-machines were described as being more like a brain controlling a body than like a man controlling a machine, which would have been a more apt simile, if there had been man-driven machines at the time - but there weren't!
I also loved the little idiosyncrasies of life back then, and the different notions that were so apparent. The narrator at one point describes himself as "Naked save for my water-soaked trousers and socks"...which would really not be considered naked these days. And I loved when the first man to see the cylinder from Mars wasn't believed because he was running around like a madman with no hat on his head. *gasp!*
Mrs. Elphinstone is a great character too...I laughed at how she "had never been out of England before...and seemed, poor woman, to imagine that the French and Martians might prove very similar."
Another gem of a sentence is when the narrator's brother finds that "It was no time for pugilistic chivalry." Quite so.
What I loved most about the book was how Wells wrote it like I would write a story of the destruction of civilization - about his friends and family and the place he lived, as though it were all happening to the author himself. And that, I think, is why it rings so eerily possible, even today.
Needles and Pins
A few weeks ago at work a strapping gentleman fainted right in my phlebotomy chair. People get faint all the time, but this guy insisted he was fine through a cold flop sweat until the moment he dropped down completely unconscious. Fortunately I had the armrest down in front of him, which prevented him from somersaulting straight to the floor. And then a few seconds later he came to with a jump and a deep breath, like I'd just woken him up from a nap in class. It was pretty crazy. I don't think anybody's ever gone out like that on me before. At least he didn't go catatonic, which happened a few weeks before to a patient of my poor lab science extern. That was much more frightening. I thought the lady might have been having a stroke.
Yesterday I drew blood from a physician who was remarkably strange. When I escorted him to the restroom and told him we needed a clean catch sample, he looked utterly confused, so I elaborated that he needed to use the provided wipe to clean first. He looked even more confused, then said, "So I clean...the meatus?" I had no idea what that was so I said yes and left him to it, then ran to my coworkers and asked for some quick Googling. It was revealed that the meatus is indeed the urinary opening. The things you learn!
Today my coworker was drawing blood from a young kid, and tried to play it down by asking if he'd ever had a bee sting. He took us by surprise by saying, "Yeah...in the head!" My coworker tried to keep going. "Well, it hurts less than...wait, did you say in the HEAD?" It was awesome.
I've started to take work for granted. I should try to do that less.
Yesterday I drew blood from a physician who was remarkably strange. When I escorted him to the restroom and told him we needed a clean catch sample, he looked utterly confused, so I elaborated that he needed to use the provided wipe to clean first. He looked even more confused, then said, "So I clean...the meatus?" I had no idea what that was so I said yes and left him to it, then ran to my coworkers and asked for some quick Googling. It was revealed that the meatus is indeed the urinary opening. The things you learn!
Today my coworker was drawing blood from a young kid, and tried to play it down by asking if he'd ever had a bee sting. He took us by surprise by saying, "Yeah...in the head!" My coworker tried to keep going. "Well, it hurts less than...wait, did you say in the HEAD?" It was awesome.
I've started to take work for granted. I should try to do that less.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
It Happened One Night
Today I revisited "It Happened One Night" starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I don't think I ever remember how much I like this movie. It has so many wonderful moments, and is so romantic in a fairly realistic fashion. The plot revolves around a down-on-his-luck newspaperman and a runaway heiress who fall in love when thrown together on a journey from Florida to New York City. The two characters seem like real people, and though they never even kiss, the chemistry between them is palpable. Love it!
Today I made a beginning on a scrub top that looks like a Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform. Here's hoping it comes out! The lovely Mariah came over to help me while our boys are off camping and having fun without us. Joke's on them, we went to Sushi Mazi and almost exploded ourselves when Marc gave us a special spicy salmon at the end of the meal. But we ate it...FOR THE HONOR! And Marc gave me his email address to arrange my birthday there....Cody will be so jealous. Hooray Sushi Mazi!
Today I made a beginning on a scrub top that looks like a Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform. Here's hoping it comes out! The lovely Mariah came over to help me while our boys are off camping and having fun without us. Joke's on them, we went to Sushi Mazi and almost exploded ourselves when Marc gave us a special spicy salmon at the end of the meal. But we ate it...FOR THE HONOR! And Marc gave me his email address to arrange my birthday there....Cody will be so jealous. Hooray Sushi Mazi!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Return to the desk
It's been a long time. Not coincidentally, my last post fell about a month before I met Mr. David Marshall. So it goes.
Speaking of Mr. Marshall, Virginia Heffernan made some astute observations in this week's times regarding the differences in our spelling, and therefore our worldviews.
"Some readers like to see portraits of authors they admire, study their personal histories or hear them read aloud. I like to know whether an author can spell. Nabokov spelled beautifully. Fitzgerald was crummy at spelling, bedeviled by entry-level traps like “definate.” Bad spellers, of course, can be sublime writers and good spellers punctilious duds. But it’s still intriguing that Fitzgerald, for all his gifts, didn’t perceive the word “finite” in definite, the way good spellers automatically do. Did this oversight color his impression of infinity? Infinaty?
"Bad spellers are a breed apart from good ones. A writer with a mind that doesn’t register how words are spelled tends to see through the words he encounters — straight to the things, characters, ideas, images and emotions they conjure. A good speller, by contrast — the kind who never fails to clock the idiosyncratic orthography of “algorithm” or “Albert Pujols” — tends to see language as a system. Good spellers are often drawn to poetry and wordplay, while bad spellers, for whom language is a conduit and not an end in itself, can excel at representation and reportage."
Thoughts?
Speaking of Mr. Marshall, Virginia Heffernan made some astute observations in this week's times regarding the differences in our spelling, and therefore our worldviews.
"Some readers like to see portraits of authors they admire, study their personal histories or hear them read aloud. I like to know whether an author can spell. Nabokov spelled beautifully. Fitzgerald was crummy at spelling, bedeviled by entry-level traps like “definate.” Bad spellers, of course, can be sublime writers and good spellers punctilious duds. But it’s still intriguing that Fitzgerald, for all his gifts, didn’t perceive the word “finite” in definite, the way good spellers automatically do. Did this oversight color his impression of infinity? Infinaty?
"Bad spellers are a breed apart from good ones. A writer with a mind that doesn’t register how words are spelled tends to see through the words he encounters — straight to the things, characters, ideas, images and emotions they conjure. A good speller, by contrast — the kind who never fails to clock the idiosyncratic orthography of “algorithm” or “Albert Pujols” — tends to see language as a system. Good spellers are often drawn to poetry and wordplay, while bad spellers, for whom language is a conduit and not an end in itself, can excel at representation and reportage."
Thoughts?
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