I don’t know why I’m surprised I didn’t enjoy this. I nearly always react poorly to post-modernism. But, I really *wanted* to enjoy it. Every time I’ve read Jane Eyre, I’ve thought Bertha Rochester, née Mason, got a really shit deal. I’ve also thought it was really suspect that we don’t actually get any evidence of her going mad prior to being locked in an attic for years and years. I mean, if I’d been locked in an attic for that long maybe I would start […]
Weird mix of weird
Across Five Aprils: 4/ 5 Stars This is another Civil War book, and another Civil War book taking place in the midwest, that I read as a kid. I grew up in the South and thought about the Civil War a LOT. It happens. Anyway, like Rifles for Watie mentioned in the previous one, this focuses on the western theater of the war but still deals a lot with the news from the East. This becomes a kind of interesting conceit, where our main character […]
Nothing. I must be solid as an oak. Except when I cry.
If the earlier collection of stories by Robert Musil provides a lamentation on the loss of teleology, then this book is a kind of celebration of it, at least through the eyes of its protagonist. Protagonist is such an important distinction in this novel, like many others, from the idea of a “hero.” It’s something I have to teach my students again and again. The protagonist is our focal point, not our hero. A protagonist can indeed be a hero, but it’s not required. We […]
Pardon the Nekkid Cover
I think this, of the three I have read so far, has the strongest sense of scope, pace, and subject. The idea here is that a youngish woman who was carrying on an affair with a married man got pushed to the edge and ended it. As she storms off, he prepares ways to remove her from his life. This means making she sure she is cut off financially, making sure she won’t “make a scene” or “cause a fuss” and anything else that might […]