Last year, my goal was to read a biography of every president. Well, I failed. I read 15 biographies (but two of George W. Bush). That goal is still in play this year, however.
But my I’ve also given myself a new goal: to read more literature. I generally focus more on sci-fi/fantasy and history, and have found myself woefully inadequate in other areas. I’ve never read Jane Austen, or Tolstoy, or William Faulkner. I aim to remedy that in 2016.
On it’s face, Metamorphosis is a simple tale. Gregor Samsa is the center of a family unaware of it’s own turmoil. His sister is still a child, his mother is crippled by asthma, and his father is a broken man unrecovered from a financial crisis. He awakes one morning to find himself turned into a grotesquely chitinous animal – typically described as a cockroach or beetle.
The novella takes place wholly within the confines of the family’s apartment, and begins with the morning of his transformation.
It’s a surreal and absurd oddity that is no less captivating for it’s impenetrability. For all the nauseating repulsivity of a man turned into a chittering beast, this to me feels more a story of wanton self-loathing. Gregor never questions his fate, and his family abhors him without quite casting him out. I think this is the element that people are referring to when they call something “Kafkaesque”: a protagonist subservient to an irredeemable and oppressive force that may, in fact, be above reproach.
I’ve never read Catcher in the Rye, and the more adolescence recedes from me, the less appealing that book becomes. But being someone who has had a more than casual lack of appreciation for himself, I think Metamorphosis is a story that would have appealed to me when I was younger. While I’m old enough now to not worry so much about my own worth, I do think there’s intellectual merit to pondering our tendency to think we’re better than we probably are. In a way, I think Metamorphosis is an invocation of Rousseau’s amour propre; that we see ourselves through the lens of other people’s perceptions. Gregor serves as a counterpoint to Holden Caulfield; he not only doesn’t represent alienation and rebellion, he gives in to the perceptions of others and agrees with them. He is a monster, and doesn’t shy away from that.
It’s an inarguably bleak and austere perspective to take, and loses none of it’s tortured depth over its last century of publication.
And I found it utterly compelling.
Never read Austen! Oh boy. You’re in for a treat. I’m actually re-reading all her books this year myself. I look forward to your reviews!
I’ve started Wuthering Heights. It has that same archaic style that’s put me off all these years.
We’ll see. I have high hopes for my Cannonball this year.
I actually hate Wuthering Heights. It’s too broody. Austen is witty and satirical and she writes such good characters.
I just need to suck it up and deal.
But every time I think about Jane Austen, I just imagine her books are all a bunch of upper class women in the early 19th century sitting around bemoaning things that I can’t relate to.
Which is weird, because I love Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility. I just don’t remember anything apart from dresses.
Austen is much more about everyday people with real lives than some of the other time period similar authors (every Bronte ever, for example).
I would suggest wither Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility as good entry points, one because you have the movie version to help you along with the language, and the other because it is short and about more grown-up characters whom might be easier to relate to. I’ve not done Austen via audio book, but I found Malin’s advice to be accurate for older texts via audio. I adored Far From the Madding Crowd last year via that method – but the narrator is key.
I might try Persuasion, thanks.
After Metamorphosis and then A Christmas Carol, it’ll be nice to read a story with which I’m not already familiar.
Austen wrote about people with people feelings, and you are a person, so I imagine you can relate :) Once you get a feel for the language, her stuff is brilliant. She is frequently criticized for writing such domestic stories that ignore the outside world, but she wrote what she knew, and it’s only if you read or look at her stories shallowly that they come off as trite. There is so much biting social commentary going on in her books it’s delicious.
You guys are selling her, don’t get me wrong.
I’m just worried that I’ll sit down to read her books and do that thing where you’re 10 pages into it before you realize you don’t know what’s going on.
“Austen wrote about people with people feelings, and you are a person, so I imagine you can relate.”
I heart you, Narfna.
Oh my God, you mustn’t ever compare Wuthering Heights with anything written by Austen! The first book is an awful mess full of deplorable people (yes, even the supporting cast!) who should all have died in some mass extinction event. It’s an interesting take on obsession, mania and sociopathic behaviour, but it’s not a romantic book, never will be and you cannot convince me to like it, even though I can see that it’s remarkable that a sheltered spinster from Yorkshire wrote it. I love Jane Eyre and everything about it as much as Wuthering Heights makes me stabby with disgust and anger.
Austen’s novels, on the other hand, are wonderfully wry, beautifully observed comedies of manner, where she slyly uses her wit and intelligence to comment on the society of the middle classes while also writing, for the most part (Mansfield Park is a dreadful bore), extremely satisfying romances. I should probably re-read Sense and Sensibility now that I have more experience and maturity, as I haven’t read that one since I was a teenager. Every time I re-read one of her books, I discover something new and delightful.
TL, DR – Wuthering Heights = awful, yet historically significant book. Austen = wonderful, funny, entertaining books that are totally worth your time.
I recommend audio versions for anything written pre-1920s. I find slightly archaic language is frequently easier to pick up when read by a talented narrator than when I’m struggling with it myself.
As always, Malin is more articulate than me at stating my opinions.
I can feel your dislike for Wuthering Heights. lol
I get the love for Austen – and I am going to try to make it through at least one of her books – but the descriptions of her stories just don’t appeal to me. I’m not big on romance or wry observations on the mores of 200 year old English society.
Oh but it’s not just biting social commentary. She creates fairly believable characters (and ones recognizable in today’s society). and then skewers them MERCILESSLY. Clueless really is a perfect Emma adaption, right down to the characterizations.
I hope I enjoy her books half as much as you all do.
Do you like Gothic novels? Because Northanger Abbey is a lovely satire of that, among other things. Emma is more about the change of a very selfish, and rather spoiled young woman into a decent human being. It’s first and foremost a pretty awful person’s attempts to match-make everyone around her (she’s not so good at it) and towards the end, she figures out her own HEA as well.
I don’t know if I like Gothic novels or not. I think the only one I’ve read is The Monk. But that was 15 years ago.