Christy's pick for December: "Steps through the Mist"

This collection of short stories that weave into one is by an author I've heard good things about, Zoran Zivkovic. Here's a description of "Steps Through The Mist" from Publishers Weekly:

"Serbian speculative fictionist Zivkovic's latest novel to be released in the U.S. (after 2006's Seven Touches of Music) isn't so much a literary work to be read as it is one to be reveled in. Like a great work of abstract art, this surrealistic novel—about five women who contend with fate in very different ways—is layered with subtle symbolism and nuance, and should be savored slowly so that the profound, and sometimes disturbing, existential underpinnings can be duly discerned. Featuring story lines about a schoolgirl who can see into other people's dreams, an institutionalized woman with the ability to know the future, a world-weary fortune teller who stumbles across true divination, a skier who's offered unconventional wisdom on a mountaintop and an elderly woman who loses her will to live when her alarm clock breaks, this montage of stories is as enlightening as it is entrancing."

Hope this sounds good for a few dark winter nights!

"I long to know who it is"

Shanxi mentioned laughing aloud in many places. I thought Letter 5, the door conversation, was seriously awesome — as a portrait of how people who are used to having servants become completely flummoxed when faced with a simple task like opening a door. It's so witty and delivers that JA specialty: making merciless fun of people while also finding real pleasure in their very human antics.

She's such a lovely observer of human nature. She must have deeply empathized with every single character she wrote about to be able to make her portraits so convincing.

So this isn't a question, except maybe to ask what scenes made you guys laugh.

The "perfect" heroine

Letter the Third:

"But lovely as I was, the Graces of my Person were the least of my Perfections. Of every accomplishment accustomary to my sex, I was Mistress. When in the Convent, my progress had always exceeded my instructions, my Acquirements had been wonderfull for my age, and I had shortly surpassed my Masters.

In my Mind, every Virtue that could adorn it was centered; it was the Rendez-vous of every good Quality and of every noble sentiment.”

What struck me most about this passage was how much novelists’ portrayals of heroes and heroines have changed! Today every protagonist is rarely if ever self-described, and they never have it so good. Although Austen is obviously parodying the heroines of her time, she raises an interesting point – people often saw the main characters of a novel to be just about perfect, or at least highly skilled and moral. Samuel Richardson's earlier novel, "Pamela," published in 1740, comes to mind.

What are the pros/cons of this approach? Conversely, what are the pros/cons of today’s protagonists? Which do you prefer, and why?

What is love?

Hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did! I confess that I laughed aloud when reading, to the consternation of those in the room who were not in on the joke. :)

Even though it's not a particularly (ahem) serious work, I thought we could treat it as such to get the conversation started...

Letter 7th - "A short Conversation between Augusta and her Brother, which I accidentally overheard, encreased my dislike to her, and convinced me that her Heart was no more formed for the soft ties of Love than for the endearing intercourse of Freindship."

This signals an interesting question, which I've swiped and adapted from The Victorian Web. The question originally referred to Pride and Prejudice, but it could equally apply to Love and Friendship:

"What is Austen's version of love? ... With how much sarcasm does Austen frequently use the phrase "violently in love?" Does love mean happiness to Austen?"

Subsequently, how does love compare and contrast to friendship?

Some secondaries

Why do you think Bellow gave Wilhem a girlfriend, Olive, and a sister, Catherine, a talentless painter who, like Wilhem (Tommy), also has created a new name for herself (Philippa)? I mean, how would the story be different without them?

And what did you think of Mr. Rappaport, the blind chicken guy who smokes big cigars. What was the purpose of Wilhelm's meeting up with him?

Related reading

Speaking of life in 1950s America, I saw "Revolutionary Road" a few months ago and was very taken with it. So I finally picked up the book by Richard Yates, thinking I'd get to it when I finished the several others I've started. I began reading the first page yesterday just to see how it started, and now I'm on page 220. I can't put it down. It's probably the best thing I've read about domestic life in that era. The writing is so clear and moving and seemingly effortless. I never feel, as I did with Bellow, that I'm on the verge of "getting it" but not quite. I get it.

Yates said this of his book:

"I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs — a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witchhunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that — felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit — and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties."

Next book - Love and Friendship

As a change of pace, mood, and time, I suggest Jane Austen's "Love and Freindship" for our next read, though here it looks like the book's publishers have corrected her original misspelling!

You can read it online at a number of places. Here's just one example - http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/lovfrend.html

Shall we get started around Nov. 22? And then we may want to take a breather for the holidays.