A visual aid

Just discovered the image bank on Commons Wikimedia and after tapping in Around the World in Eighty Days a very useful map popped up that shows the route that Fogg took. So far 11 chapters in and he has got half way through India to Calcutta.

Lunchtime read: Around the World in Eighty Days

This book is one of those that falls into the ripping yarns category which means you get sucked into the tale and before you know it the minutes have passed and your lunch break is over. The short chapters are one of the reasons why it feels like the book is flying by but it is mainly because the plot is based around this race around the world and that pace infects the reader.

Highlights from chapters VI to XI
With a detective on his tail Fogg manages to land at Suez and set off for India. The detective pumps Passepartout for information and concludes that because of the mysterious journey and the amount of money Fogg is carrying he is the bank robber but he has to continue to dog his progress because no arrest warrant has arrived.

The detective gets a breakthrough when Passepartout goes into a temple with shoes on and breaks the law about respecting Indian religious customs and decides to use that as a way of arresting the party, which meanwhile is on a train to Bombay to catch a boat. They are going along without a care in the world when suddenly the track runs out and the two days Fogg has made up because the boat was quick look like being lost but they pay for an elephant to take them through the jungle to where the line starts again.

More tomorrow…

The Madhouse - post VI

The battle for the harvest ends in waste and disappointment and is used by the STA as a metaphor for the failure of communism. The different types of personality and reaction to communism is also shown by those who work and those who shirk. The entire experience seems to sum up the misery of living under a system that no longer has any ability to inspire fear or respect from its people.

Bullet points between pages 322 – 368

* There is an argument between JRF and one of the hard working members of the team who says that he cannot relate to the young man but in the end the argument is diffused after someone points out they are both striving to be individualists and are very much alike

* The rains come and things start to get hairy for the workers who have not been issued with proper waterproof clothing and now face pressure to get everything picked before the crops get ruined

* But with the transport system being halted by mud the workers are told to put the food they dig up into storage pits in the ground where everyone knows they will be left to go rotten and then when the building supplies come in to build proper storage theft is rife

* The period in the countryside ends with bitter feelings over the theft of the building supplies with most having to be put back after an inquiry is launched and the commissar is exposed for having a relationship out of wedlock and it all gets a bit messy

So ends parts three of the book and the final part should revert back to JRF and pick up the story of the KGB investigation. More tomorrow...

Lunchtime read: Around the World in Eighty Days

With my holiday looming it seemed like a good idea to choose a lunchtime read that is all about travel. It is also an excuse to pick up one of the £2 lime green Penguin Popular Classics. This range has largely passed me by but is a great idea because for slightly more than the cost of a newspaper you can get a classic book.

My knowledge of Around the World in 80 Days is based on cartoons and films so it should be interesting picking up the original book.

Highlights from the first V chapters
Phileas Fogg is a rich man who sticks to a rigid routine based around his home and the Reform Club. He dismisses his servant for bringing him his shaving water at two degrees out from what he expects and hires Frenchman Jean Passepartout. The new servant, who has a useful background in the circus world, is attracted to Fogg because he is looking for a quiet life but all of that will be changed when Fogg returns from the Reform Club earlier than normal and announces they are going round the world in 80 days.

The reason why is because there is a bank robbery and as Fogg discusses the prospects of how fare the criminal will have got in his escape with his friends in the Reform Club he mentions an article in the paper that says it is possible to go round the world in 80 days. They dismiss his suggestion so he bets £20,000 that he can do it and sets off home to pack and leave for the train to catch a boat to France. But no sooner is he on the continent than a warrant for his arrest is issued with Fogg being identified as the bank robber with the trip seen by the police as a ruse to throw them off his scent that kills off the business of betting money on Fogg’s success

More tomorrow…

Zinoviev's communism definition

The Madhouse is written in the Brezhnev era when the fear of Stalin type actions was reducing and the obvious gap between the quality of life in the West and Russia was clear to anyone who wanted to open their eyes. The result is a cynicism about communism as a political approach that permeates all of The Madhouse with one stunning example of Zinoviev’s definition of communism:

He talks about defining a society buy the amount of good quality goods (in this case sandals and potatoes) they make and bad quality with the good quality going to the leadership and the bad going to the masses. On paper communism should supply nothing but good quality goods to its people. But you could not be more wrong…

“If your calculations had produced the following result: eleven pairs of good sandals (two pairs for the Gen Sec and a pair each for the chief members of the Politburo) and two hundred and fifty-four million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and nine hundred and eighty-nine bad pairs, and similarly eleven tons of good potatoes (two tons for the Gen Sec and a ton each for the chief members of the Politburo) and two hundred and fifty-four million nine hundred and ninety-nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and nine hundred and eighty-nine tons of bad ones, then you could say with complete assurance that you are dealing with a society under full communism.”

The Madhouse - post V

In part three of the book the point of view changes from that of the junior research fellow (JRF) to a senior technical assistant (STA) who is even more cynical than JRF about the state of communism. He has reached the heights of being JRF but was demoted back down to a STA because he made up his research, stole ideas and was incredibly lazy. Now he manages to live in his sleep and shut out the parts of the daily grind that annoy him.

Bullet points from pages 264 - 322

* The STA has seen a bit of life and is highly cynical about the state if not just Russia but also the world at large having an incredibly cynical attitude about those in positions of leadership

* He manages to lose his chances of promotion by stealing research from the provinces and trying to pass it off as his own and then because he becomes a model parasite that lives off the system without contributing much

* Partly in reaction to something that is compulsory anyway but because if you volunteer you don’t have to go the next year STA signs up to work on the collective farm that is connected to the academy

* On the farm he is put in a group with JRF who seems to have no opinions on anything but still manages to provoke an interest but it is the woman running the place that brings most people together because of her ridiculous views on the West

* Crops are stolen and sold and the system of targets and numerical trading between collective farms exposes the hollowness of the entire system and adds more fuel to the anti-communist fire that STA is happy stirring up

More tomorrow...

Reading about each other

It’s that time of year again when Waterstone’s asks politicians what they are planning to read over their summer holidays. The Independent has given some co verage to the findings. Last year the theme was low brow with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code topping the table. This year it seems politicians like either reading about their own colleagues or books by each other with Gordon Brown by Tom Bower, The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell and William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner by Tory MP William Hague. On the last book, which came out top of the summer reading list, you would expect a Tory bias but Liberals also said they planned to read it.

No doubt that will help offset some of the earnings that Hague lost when he decided to leave the lucrative after dinner speaking circuit and re-enter the cut and thrust of the opposition front benches.

bookmark of the week

A bookmark not only keeps your page in a book but also has the ability to be a record of a memory. Digging out some stuff in the garage today I’m came across this bookmark that was purchased years ago on a trip to Cleeve Abbey in Somerset, which is a very well preserved monastery run by English Heritage. For a moment the name Cleeve Abbey meant nothing but after Googling it the memories cam flooding back.

book of books - Franny and Zooey

I'm not sure if there is much left now by J.D.Salinger that the library has or if there is any more to read. Most of his short story collections have now been covered and at the end you are left appreciating the power of his imagination. The creation of the fictional Glass family is so believable that you keep falling into the mistake of believing that Buddy is J.D himself and his brother must have committed suicide. Over the course of the collections Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and For Esme with Love and Squalor there are all the pieces of the jigsaw to put together not only what happened with Seymour but how his suicide impacted on the key members in the rest of the family.

Like the other two short story collections these stories run into each other both in terms of chronology and the issues being covered. The clever thing is that if you read them with reference to the other it would still work as a readable and provoking piece of fiction.

Plot Summary
Franny
Franny Glass turns up to meet her boyfriend Lane and rather than just sit their and look pretty and go along to the ball game and make him look good and agree with what he says she picks holes. She starts by undermining his college paper and then starts to reveal her loathing for those who teach at her college and starts talking about phonies. One of the most important revelations is that she has given up acting, something she is very good at, because she feels everyone else involved is a phoney. Lane struggles to cope with her mood and Franny goes to the restroom for air and starts crying and clinging onto a book. The book turns out to be about a Russian peasant who believes that with the aid of knowledge about the 'Jesus Prayer' can harmonise with God. She tells Lane all about this but he doesn't really understand and then as she announces that she is going to the restroom again she collapses and the weekend is effectively over.

Zooey
Things start with Zooey in the bath reading a letter that is four years old from his brother Buddy advising him not to become an actor without first having completed his PhD. Then Bessie Glass (the mother) walks in and starts annoying him and trying to get his opinion on what is wrong with Franny who is prostrate on the couch and has been off her food and causing concern since being sent home from her weekend with Lane. Zooey takes an age to get ready, is obviously a man of great confidence and appears to be off for a lunch date with a director when he turns into the room where Franny is lying on the sofa. Zooey knows all about the Jesus Prayer and attempts to use a combination of psycho analysis and bullying to get her to snap out of it but fails. He leaves the room and again you assume he is leaving the apartment but he heads to Buddy and Seymour's room and using the private phone in their old bedroom phones pretending to be Buddy and asks to speak to Franny. he doesn't fool her for long and you sense he is about the blow it again when he wears his heart on his sleeve admits he feels the way that she does but adds that everyone might be a fool but you carry on because there might be someone with quality among the audience and she is born to act. The message seems to get through and she climbs into her mothers bed and both Franny and Zooey have come to a point where they realise that although their brother's Buddy and Seymour might have indoctrinated them they did so wisely.

Is it well written?
The stories work particularly well back to back and leave you with a sense of calm after the damage of years of superior thinking are corrected and pointed in the right direction in the younger of the Glass family children. But on their own the stories work with Franny showing the strain of trying to lap up the rubbish that everyone else pedals and falls for. Zooey is also facing that same struggle and reacts with bitterness to those he sees as idiotic. The result is that in their own way both are unhappy and blame their brothers for hard wiring them to think like that. But equally their brothers taught them to be the best you can be regardless of the intellectual depth of those around you and it is that lesson that saves both Franny and Zooey in the end. The fact that the larger issue can carry over until the final paragraph is because of the intelligence in the writing and a confidence with the material. You really believe these people exist at points.

Should it be read?
As I have said after reading some of the other short story collections it is important to see a writer in the round and the mistake of just going for Catcher in the Rye is that although a great book it shows only one side to Salinger. Here is characterisation, within a family, that is stretched over several books of which this is just one. There is an eye for detail and an understanding about the journey the reader is on that makes it a lot easier to read these books with you feeling that you are putting the jigsaw pieces of the Glass family together in a very satisfying way - like collecting a complete set of something. It also reminds you that great writing can take many forms and has the power to provoke and challenge even over 29 pages - the length of the Franny story.

Summary
Hold your head up high no matter how bitter and twisted you feel inside because if you have the talent you have to let it shine.

Version read - Penguin paperback

The Madhouse - post IV

The campaign to try to entrap JRF steps up a gear with the introduction of a female agent who is meant to seduce him, gain his trust and then get him to reveal more incrimination secrets. But things at work change dramatically with the arrival of a young woman in the administration team who despite the poison of colleagues decides to start something with JRF.

Bullet points between pages 202 – 264

* JRF is tipped off by Beria that if he goes to the cinema there is going to be a young woman waiting for him that will have been sent by the KGB and she will be compliant and friendly towards him

* Meanwhile at work things seem to be going well with his new boss liking him and starting to hand out the sort of privileges that come at a higher level – like library study days – which JRF spends down the pub

* Some of his friends continue to try and incriminate him by talking about the attraction of assassinations but JRF remains quiet worrying about the blood thirsty turn that some of his friends have taken

* Then he starts to see a new member of staff and the relationship sparks jealousy across the board with even his KGB staged lover showing a jealous streak that is unusual for someone with numerous lovers including many in the Academy

* With the KGB case getting nowhere fast they tell the academy to send him off on sick leave so that he is out of the way when they build a case against him but the announcement that JRF is being sent to the country sparks even more jealously

More maybe over the weekend…

The Madhouse - post III

Things become clear as JRF suddenly becomes the focus of a KGB investigation and the difference between those characters that are real and in his mind are laid bare. Although he has moved department the work he was involved in with the mentally ill has damaged him as the KGB take anyone mad or sane seriously and have the ability if required to rehabilitate someone clinically insane if they could be a good witness.

The funniest part is when the investigators come up against Marx, Beria, Stalin and Lenin – the characters that populate JRF’s mind and try to pin down who they are.

“’Right’ said the leader of the team of operatives. , ‘the connection between JRF and the “Workers’ Group” has been confirmed. Those members of the group that have been arrested have identified him. We now know who have been hiding behind the nicknames Terrorist, Poet and Herself. As yet we have been unable to identify Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Iron Felix, Beria and Himself.’”

Bullet points between pages 122 – 202

* Hanging out with people that talk, however madly, about the prospect of blowing up the head of the KGB was bound to land JRF in trouble and sure enough he is called in to discuss the terrorists plans

* But almost instantly the case is no longer about the Terrorist and the idea that he had also outlined of a workers’ group but is about JRF and the KGB sense there is a chance to pin something on the sane element of the investigation JRF himself

* In parallel to talking to JRF all of his friends and colleagues are also dragged in with some being encouraged to try to encourage him to discuss terrorist attacks and others being told to write down details of conversations that might incriminate him

* All the time the voices in his head – Beria and Iron Felix – with direct experience of the secret service try to give him advice that will help him counter the growing storm that threatens to undermine his good work in the academy

* Despite all of this he is still searching in vain for the woman who gave him the ottoman and she writes a letter that tells him that she never intends to see him again and that seems to be an end to the matter

More tomorrow…

book of books - Story of a Life

One of the most oft quoted pieces of advice to anyone who wants to be a writer is to focus on what you know. Sticking with that approach means that you end up with a genre of books that are semi-autobiographical but attempt to widen the story away from just one character describing the actions and thoughts of other people. Konstantin Paustovsky falls into that category along with the likes of Marcel Proust but what makes his work standout is its setting.

He has the benefit of using the Ukraine as a backdrop and is able to produce something that is not that far removed from Vladimir's Nabakov’s Speak, Memory with a family on the brink of great change as the World War and revolution arrives. Those who support change from the luxury of a cosy middle class existence seem, just like in Speak, Memory, to be particularly naïve about what the future holds.

Plot summary
Starting with his father’s death from cancer Konstantin then traces back his family history to the age of about six or seven and then takes it up to his early twenties. In that time his family is torn apart by his father’s political views and an affair that not only divides father and mother but throws the later into poverty. His mother and blind sister become the two tragic figures not only because of their poverty but because Konstantin can only see them as barriers on his route to independence. Konstantin’s answer is to escape to Kiev and study and teach to get by and most of the recollections are about his experiences at school and the different teachers he encounters. But this is also a story about a country at the crossroads and the defeat against Japan in 1905 is a cause of national shame and the indications made by the Tsar in that same year that some concessions will be made around his autocratic rule lead to demonstrations which are then put down with troops and gunfire. But throughout all these stages the countryside is a constant and at the end when Konstantin is fighting heart break it is by focusing on the landscape that he manages to regain his happiness.

Is it well written?
It takes a bit of time to get going because things start backwards in the way you are introduced to a dying estranged father who is then used as a point at which to look back and start the story properly. The feeling grows though that this is a magical world of childhood that is supported and heightened by the environment and there is something that weaves in and out of the writing as another character and that is the steppe and Kiev. By the time the book comes to a close you want to rush out and see how the story of his life continued and that is the best way of indicating this book manages to grab hold of you.

Should it be read?
For those Russian scholars looking for another point of view of life in Kiev pre-revolution it should be added to the list. For those who enjoyed the role that the countryside plays in their works of Boris Pasternak and Mikhail Sholokhov then this can be appreciated. But for anyone who has ever been tempted to look back on their childhood and recall their first kiss, the first time they caught a chill after being caught in a thunderstorm and the memories of friendship with extended family and friends this should provoke memories that might have been lost at the back of the mind.

Summary
Growing up is a painful battle between aiming for independence and understanding the role the family, money and politics plays on reaching it

Lunchtime read: Franny and Zooey

The book ends with both of the characters covered in this two story collection having a moment when the truth is spelt out in order to save them from falling apart struggling to be normal. Zooey plays an interesting role as psychoanalyst, damaged brother and bitter actor but pushes himself into places he would have otherwise avoided to try to help his sister Franny snap out of her despair.

Highlights from pages 106 – 131
After having failed to pull Franny out of her breakdown with his bitter logical arguments about the Jesus prayer and what sort of person Jesus was Zooey walks out of the lounge. You suspect he is leaving for the lunch appointment he has mentioned several times but instead he heads for Seymour and Buddy’s room and from them after an hour of getting into the role phones up pretending to be Buddy. Franny comes on the line and attacks Zooey for being bitter and lecturing and then she realises that it is Zooey and finally her brother gets through to her.

The turning point is when he tells her that without her knowledge Zooey and Buddy travelled up to see her act in a college play. He tells her she was brilliant but there is no point being superior to some segments of the audience because looking for a good audience is a search that will destroy her. She should enjoy the talent she has and accept that the world is not full of similarly minded people.

A review will follow this weekend…

The Madhouse - post II

There is a constant stream of debate happening in the mind of the hero of the book between Lenin, Stalin, Beria, Iron Felix (founder of the modern KGB) and Marx. They keep telling him that it doesn’t matter what he thinks the system is all about because it is flawed but that is irrelevant because to succeed you have to not only turn a blind eye to the failures but embrace them and become one of them.

Bullet points between pages 64 – 122

* JRF starts the process of becoming a party member not because he believes but because without that he cannot publish his thesis and move onto the next rung of the ladder

* But as he starts to consider becoming a party member the debate in his head about the relevance and the morality of the party starts to get louder with Stalin and Marx admitting that there works and approach were ‘shit’

* Meanwhile on the relationship front all of the running around to get his party accreditation means that he loses one girlfriend who he stands up and then almost loses another who is forced to stay locked in his room for hours

* But one girl remains faithful to him and he returns one night drunk and tired and finds that she has replaced his bed with an ottoman but when he wakes from a blissful sleep she has gone and he doesn't remember anything about her

* He starts to ingratiate himself with some of the movers and shakers in the academy and is asked to write the preface to a book that one of the directors is writing about scientists that have expressed negative thoughts about the regime

* All the time there is a debate raging in his mind with Stalin, Lenin and the voices from the KGB all discussing why the communist party is defunct and how he can climb the greasy pole by taking a few short-cuts

More tomorrow when hopefully I will have calmed down a little bit more about the bike being stolen. The attitude of the police was predictable with them showing little hope of getting it back or little interest in the whole case.

Lunchtime read: Franny and Zooey

These two stories in this book complement each other well because both characters are flawed as a result of their upbringing and experiences in the public eye on a radio show. Although Franny is seeking some sort of solace in religion her brother is not that far behind her in trying to seek some comfort from somewhere and has even considered going down the prayer route himself.

Highlights from pages 82 – 106
Zooey starts to provoke Franny into talking about her current state of mind and admits after she starts to explain that she thinks most people in her college are phonies that he thinks the same about people in films and television. But then he moves on to question her ‘hair shirt’ approach saying that although there is nothing wrong with having something against the system but she is making it too personal. He adds that her actions are also unfair because they are disturbing their parents.

Whether or not this lecture has any impact will become clear in the last twenty or so pages…