#30 - Pygmalion

One of the starkest differences between writing a novel and writing a play is the amount of control the artist has over the result. A novel is crafted, more or less, by a single person. Plays go through layers of adaptation and reshaping before even the original work hits the stage. Actors, directors, workers of all kinds immediately get their hands into it, and some writers cannot deal with this sort of sharing. There are ways around it - Our Town goes into obscenely detailed stage directions, lighting and set instructions, and emotive cues - but for many, it's a struggle that starts after the first changes are already underway. In Pygmalion's case, Shaw wrestled with the ending. Theatregoers wanted a happy ending to walk away with, while Shaw's original work demanded a bittersweet one. So as director after director, producer after producer changed the ending to suit their audience, Shaw fought back harder and harder. He inserted a lengthy epilogue explaining his thinking and showing why the happy ending was false, which was attached to all subsequent publications. There are now some productions using the original text, but the most famous examples - from the original production to the musical adaption My Fair Lady - still have the cloying, optimistic take. Shaw's reason for disliking the happy ending make perfect sense. The play is a critique of many of the values of the London of the day - elitism, misogyny, egotism - and rewarding Henry Higgins, the most callous one of all, for this completely ruins any message Shaw was trying to send. Certainly the corrupted version still allows for Eliza to make her stand, have her "bit back", but it dampens the vindictiveness that was so essential to the morality of the work. 

Many of the things I enjoyed about Pygmalion were the way in which Shaw made his criticism. Henry Higgins, it should be understood, is a villain, and each character's interactions with him show that in a slightly different light, but unlike most villains he actually gets to say his piece about WHY he is the way he is. In one of, in my opinion, one of the strongest passages, he explains his theory of interpersonal communication, and for a split second it makes sense and he's actually a heroic example of standing by principles and then just as quickly the gaps in the explanation become apparent and then he is again a bully and a brute. Another highlight of the work was Mr. Doolittle's rise and fall - more amusing than anything, it held a lot of sincere quips about the joys of poverty, something that reminded me of Anna Karenina and the ode to the rural life.

9/10

#29 - Little Women

First off, the obligatory explanation as to my delays in posting. After finishing Anna Karenina, I was well into the final exam season of my first year at Western, and so I laid off on starting Pygmalion until later. Later stretched to the distant future when I registered for Children's Literature for the summer term, giving me a whole new list to deal with before I could return to the challenge. The list itself is quite a good one, ranging from fairy tales and nonsense verse to boys' adventure novels to the "domestic novel" for young ladies to the more modern fantasy genre. However, only a single book was to be found on both lists, and that is this bastion of women's literature, Little Women.

Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women as a favour to a publisher friend of hers, and its success was soon followed by a second part, Good Wives, and two sequels, Little Men and Jo's Boys. However the original two-volume set is the part that everyone gads on about, and it is not immediately evident why. Alcott was not predisposed to write a novel about the domestic life, as she herself lived a surprisingly modern and urban life. She moans in her diaries about how she plods away, mirroring my thoughts exactly. The book is SLOW, in a way I haven't found before. Usually when a book reads slowly its because it is interminably thick and I need a large block of time to get into it. Little Women managed to come along when I had nothing but reading time, but its bland, repetitive language made me want to fall asleep at all hours of the day. I'm putting this in front of the actual analysis of the plot and book itself because regardless of the book's qualities, the ability of this novel to cause narcolepsy should be noted as a warning label at all times.

Little Women is based on the lives of Louisa and her three sisters, captured in the book as Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. It follows them through their late childhood and budding womanhood, showing the different paths that each of them took. Meg is the model of a submissive housewife figure, and she marries early and raises twins through the second part. Beth is a sickly child who is entirely selfless and honest, and passes on at the age of 18 through an unknown ailment. Jo is the headstrong tomboy of the family (and Alcott's avatar in the story), refusing the neighbour Laurie's proposal, and realizing a budding writing career before marrying the older German professor Bhaer in the close of the second part. After Laurie's rejection he goes off to brood in Europe where he encounters a newly flowering Amy, now the shining star of the family, and the two come home married after some predictable angst through the second part.

The majority of the action happens after the original Little Women ends. If read as only the first part, the majority is taken up by a repetitive looping moralizing in which one precocious daughter longs for some frivolity or trinket, seeks to obtain it or act the part to some failure, returns crying to mother, who gives consolation tied in with Biblical commands which the daughters thank her most genuinely for. This comprises most of the first 20 chapters, and had me pulling at my lymph nodes. But the plot did pick up in the second half, the characters were extremely well-formed (because they were based on her own family) and the concept of free-thinking women choosing between careers and husbands was actually a marked leap forward for young women's literature. However, narcolepsy.

5/10

#28 - Anna Karenina

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The first line of Anna Karenina may be its most well-known part, but it's also probably one of the only parts I truly loved. Before my first Russian book Crime and Punishment, I was concerned about how heavy and dreary it was going to be, and was instead happily surprised by an excellent psychological thriller. However, after my second Russian book, Anna Karenina, the score stands tied at one apiece. While C + P was about Russians killing and dealing with the ramifications of that, Anna Karenina is about Russians cheating and dealing with the ramifications of THAT. The result is a much thicker, slower read, filled with Austen-esque inner monologues on the thoughts behind the words during the dance with that boy at the ball last week at this princess' house. The writing still carries the same realist style of the other Russians, something that I'm coming more and more to terms with as I move forward. It's amazing how out of the driest language they can still create a vivid picture, like the pointillism of writing.

There's something in how all of the old books were written - every author takes the opportunity to fill their empty spaces with essays on whatever tickles their fancy. When I thought it was just Melville in Moby Dick I shrugged, figuring him to just be pretentious. But then long novel after long novel started containing passages and entire chapters on philosophy, economics, religion, history and all manner of academic topics. Discussions amongst people at parties are indepth analyses of artists, authors and plays - with the winner of the argument always furthering the agenda of the author himself. This sort of philandering is, I suppose, acceptable when you consider that these were published in serial magazines, and these magazines were often one of the only sources of new media available for consumption, and so had to try and cater to all audiences.

That said, to talk about the actual book. This was phenomenally slow going from the start, and unlike so many of the other books on the list, it didn't pick up as it went on. Only through sheer force of will did I pull myself through the books - procrastinating by studying and then forcing myself to go for another round. The book revolved around a group of noble Russian families and their various liaisons, and climaxed with the violent suicide of the title Anna Arkadyevna Karenina. It was a fine plot, strong and passionate characters, and showed all of the stages of infatuation, love and loss that happen in real life. I simply did not enjoy it throughout, and while many parts were well written, it was lost upon me as an entire work. On the other hand, it got me to learn my Russified name, Nikolay Iosefovitch - Kolya for short.

6/10

#27 - The Hours

This book makes you want to kill yourself...in the best way possible. The Hours, the third of the so far exemplary Oldfield Options, is a modern classic by Michael Cunningham, winning the 1999 Pulitzer Prize. The title - and further, the entirety of the novel - is referencing Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. There are three connected storylines in The Hours - Mrs. Woolf herself on her first day of writing; Mrs. Brown, a painfully suburban housewife who is reading the novel; and Mrs Vaughan, whose name Clarissa leads her to be nicknamed "Mrs. Dalloway" by her dying writer friend Richard. All three, like Dalloway herself, are followed through an ordinary day that reveals extraordinary things.

The characters all share certain traits, some of which are more appealing to me than others. They're frightfully intelligent, with kind and caring domicile spouses who are simply trying to help. However, it is those demons that they need help from that are more insidious. None of them can look at themselves in the mirror. All of them can't shake a constant feeling of lack, of complacency and disgust therein. All of them have happy lives and yet cannot bear to be happy in them, and it would be more tragic if they didn't seem to revel in the irony of it. It may have been more the snapshot the book provides, but it seemed that at the greatest points of insanity they were happiest, while quiet peace brought only desperation. I should note that Vaughan wasn't the one in her storyline who exhibited these qualities, but her ex-lover Richard. I wish I could have felt more for the characters, but the way in which their own internal chaos overruled their care for others left too bitter a taste in my mouth.

The writing, however, was flawless. Truly powerful, evocative, and every other word you'd find on a New York Times bestseller book jacket, it really blew me away just how good it was. It may have been just due to being post-Melville, but it was just so smooth and nice to read, like a warm (alright, sometimes violently spicy) soup. All of the dialogue, the imagery and the stream-of-consciousness rhythms were expertly executed, leading to a fantastic book that fully deserves to be recognized as a classic equal to writers such as Woolf herself.

9/10