From Shalimar to Plague

Now I am reading The Plague by Albert Camus.

Shalimar the Clown ended on a slightly ambiguous note, I wonder if the author was so pleased with his own book that he wanted to leave open the possibility for a sequel. I thought the book was good exposure to the Kashmir situation. I remember learning vaguely about India, and within the brief overview of its history a mention that Kashmir is and was a troubled region. Unfortunately the book didn't help me love and accept Muslims as a misunderstood bunch of dudes the way I think they'd like to be seen here in the States. On the other hand I guess the religion would have to take a less radical form in a civilized and monied society like this one. Isn't that what happened to Christianity?

Spoiler warning, if you're planning to read Shalimar, don't read this...
One thing I didn't like, or didn't expect was India/Kashmira to fall for and carry on with a guy who was from Kashmir. Being used to and growing up in the States wouldn't he be inaccessible?
Then again, I don't undertand the GIs who ended up staying in Vietnam or Korea, since I have a difficult time understanding cultures other than my own. As a side note, my coping mechanism
when encountering foreign behavior, American or other wise is to be accepting and not take anything too seriously. My assumption these days, in my old age is that I'm not going to have time to understand as much as I'd like any more.

On to The Plague. The cover says

"A PERFECT ACHIEVEMENT"
- NEW REPUBLIC
So far it's quite a clever read. The author gives us two characters through which the story is told, one whom the author claims is the author, and one is observed through his day-to-day encounters. The author's author is a detatched, rather eccentric person, who makes notes of odd vignettes for himself, but collects information from various sources to compose the book I am reading. I haven't decided whether the author has stepped out of his character's shoes to tell about him, or whether the author intends that his author character is writing about himself. The other character, a doctor, in a book about the plague, easily, or I should say appropriately, is in a position to chronicle the effects because he is in the position of visiting and treating affected patients. The author changes from specific conversations, using quotation marks, and specific people to the doctor's general experiences such as the fact that he has to stay at the house where a patient is inflicted, or the family will shut out the ambulance when it arrives. Then he's accompanied by volunteer police who stay so he can move on to the next house.

Also interesting about the book are the frequent references to the sky, be it indifferent, clear blue, oppressive, etc.

A little comment about myself. I almost stopped reading this book. There's a passage that reminded me that I don't do well with blood, especially in a story, or a book, or even just at parties where someone is telling a funny story about hearts exploding with nothing externally visible.
This passage is after a meeting with the local government in which Dr. Rieux tries to convince them that something is definitely going on, and that they are better safe than sorry.
Followed by scowls and protestations, Rieux left the committee-room. Some minutes later, as he was driving down a back street redolent of fried fish and urine, a woman screaming in agony, her groin dripping blood, stretched out her arms toward him.

This book is about what people do in a situation where something is going wrong, and eventually that something starts to interfere in their lives, eventually to the point where their town becomes literally cut off from the outside world.

I did stop reading Interview with the Vampire, I couldn't handle the engorgement the newly changed vampire experienced. I didn't stop reading Gravity's Rainbow though the part about the dogs' salivary glands being surgically pointed outside their mouths to more easily collect and measure the salivary response almost made me pass out.

Wastes of time

Thoughts while riding metro: What isn't a waste of time, really?
First, and easier are the items that ARE a waste of time
Television (I suppose with the exception of educational television)
Sports
Books by 'D for Dead' type authors

I'll have to think about it more. There's so much of life that we just do to pass the time, so much that isn't pointed towards one purpose. I think that it would be impossible to make progress towards that purpose every minute of every day, so then there are those gaps where the human being unwinds and recouperates and is ready for the next round.

Shalimar's Got a Devil

Again, this book is clearly about the ideas that drive people, and how those ideas are played out and how they are described by humans to one another, and to the reader.

Shalimar, now that he's mad as hell and not going to take it any more, runs off to join the Kashmir liberation army (he's from Kashmir, and apparently the area is in dispute), only this is really a way for him to pass time until he can kill his former wife (she's dead legally but not dead physically). While up in the mountains there's a lot of words about him, his state, the state of his former wife, the state, and foreshadowing the fate of all of the above. One passage I liked, and want to quote is on page 265. This is the iron mullah, who once took up residence in the neighboring village of Shirmal, in Kashmir, and failed to bring things to a violent head there. This same mullah is now on the Paki side of the line, again inciting violence in a strong confident voice. Part of his teaching as follows:

Ideology was primary. The infidel, obsessed with possessions and wealth, did not grasp this, and believed that men were primarily notivated by social and material self-interest. This was the mistake of all infidels, and also their weakness, which made it possible for them to be defeated. The true warrior was not primarily motivaed by worldly desires, but by what he believed to be true. Economics was not primary. Ideology was primary.

I think it's easy to see the connection between this and almost every terrorist action, and in my mind I wonder how this idea can be exercised in a normal non-violent way against the oppression of the economy. Ok that doesn't make sense, I'm really just enjoying the exposure to ideas that this book has to offer. This book not only makes me impatient, but it makes me pensive.

Paralysis

Now that I've filled 'you' in on the fact that my mind hits upon wonderful ephiphanies while emerging from underground and pedding my way to the tall squarish structure called 'my' office building, here is one of them, in its either short or long form, hard to say before I've written it.

Today's epiphany of sorts looks like this: "Paralyzed by Possibilities." This would protentially be put on a t-shirt in some funky Web 3.0 font with a bit of glow and goo looking pseudo ironed-on... and the back story of the shirt as told to literally thousands of inquiring minds on the street, in the office on extremely casual day, and in bars, clubs, and places of gathering for social purposes, and even occasionally at church functions although more apprehensively** . Yikes does the period go after the ** thingy? What are those thingys called anyway? Reference marks? Text anchor points? Where was I?

Anyway then I realized it wasn't specific enough, I thought about my customer (program manager) and the lack of speed in which decisions are made, due to the need for accurate and complete information in as much volume as possible before said decision is promgulated (promulgated?). I personally can make decisions and I think they are wonderfully awesome, but I was thinking of the self in the scenario of talking to others, semi-social and mostly work environment where I want to sound intelligent and confident, but usually come across as unsure of my information, unless of course I'm sure of my information.

That whole train of thought really originated with the desire to excel at what I do and be acknowledged as a smart, competent member of the team, and eventually someone who can lead.

This thing, leadership, and the whole necessary part of actually liking people enough to LEAD them somewhere, the idea of having the personality for it seems distant to me. I feel that a metamorphosis would have to occur in which I become a pleasant and cheerful person with warmth and feeling as well as strength and resolve. The warmth and feeling part being the more problematic of those characteristics, since I think my ability to feel and to connect lies dormant. I hope it exists at all, for if it doesn't it can't wake up.

**apprehensive is word of the day

Mar Shali

More on Shalimar.
I'm the sort of guy who doesn't solve the mystery until Columbo does. Mystery shows and books for me were agonizing because I felt like (and yes the shows and books are for me, for I am Consumer, hear me read!) I should be catching on to vital clues and putting them together. This is only part of the list of ways the world intimidates me. Other items include those pictures that were popular when I was in high school, where a person had to look crosseyed or look beyond in order to see this cool 3-D hippo or something (in the meantime I'm sure those people were being subliminally programmed to eatmoremcdonalds; trivia games, crosswords, sudoku, and video games like Myst. What are those type called again?

To bring it back to the book I'm reading, I was annoyed for a few pages because it suddenly became clear to me why the main guy was killed, and I thought, well now I know how it ends, the big revelation, why keep reading? Annoyance. However, I realized this may have been intentional, that the author was not an buffoon and lousy writer, although it's not as fun now, knowing who took who from whom and had a girl by her and then got killed by the latter who. I realized that the plot is the accompaniment and the characters (with ideas in their heads) are the (what's the opposite of accompaniment?????)

For example I love this gem from p. 162:
He was moved to the Propaganda Section and in the two years that followed went back to what he knew: the creation of false identities. "The reinvention of the self, that classic American theme," he would write in his memoir, "began for me in the nightmare of old Europe's conquest by evil. That the self can so readily be remade is a dangerous, narcotic discovery. Once you've started using that drug, it isn't easy to stop."

One annoying thing I will add though, Rushdie's main characters are so beautiful and talented (the 4 main ones) that it's almost annoying in the sense that he's clearly highlighting the fiction that they are, and leaving only the ideas as the reality. The plot has been taken away in a 1 = 1 sense, the characters are imaginary vessels and only ideas remain.

Pretty good ones, I think.

This blog is for me

Literally, this blog is for me. I find that since I started this here little corner of for-me-ness, I have a running list of entries, from about getting-on-the-bus o'clock, until arriving-at-the-office o'clock in the morning, and somtimes at other times, but usually when I'm reading or have just read. In fact, that tidbit just written was composed in idea form at least a few days ago.

I enjoy the fact that I'm more thinky now that I have a blog. Hang on, I'm not really, as my lists will attest, I have lists of little catch phrases that I'd like to piss people off with, such as the one I thought of last week: 'lesbians are ugly', and hope one day to put them on t-shirts and sell them to extremely jaded cynical people.

I should eat, it's close to lunch time at the moment. It's actually past the time I could have started eating, but as usual I've been preoccupied when the 11 o'clock hour strikes.

But I want to finish this thought train. So I, wishing I had all the time in the world and a computer that could read directly from directed brainwaves (not the random less than directed thoughts, mind) and capture such things forever, for my own enjoyment in later years, or minutes, or for progeny.

I still haven't written my little concurrence with Marx.

Shalimar the Clown

I've finished Janet Frame's book and have moved on to Rushdie. I'm not sure how Shalimar the Clown made it onto my reading list, but I wonder if it's coming out as a movie sometime in the near future? I sometimes put such books on my reading list, and I sometimes find out a book that I've read will soon be or is planned to be a movie, such as Shantaram, which I very much enjoyed reading, in spite of myself and in spite of my lack of interest in India, and in spite of my boycott of Travelocity because their customer service is nothing but Indian or Pakistani, and incredibly frustrating.

Shalimar is not as absorbing as Shantaram, but still a lovely tale and well told nonetheless. Ever since my (recent) exposure to Nabokov, my sensitivity to wordplay is up, and there are a few examples of good wordplay in Rushdie's book.

I'll add more later about the book, but for now, I'll only say I love the part about the difficulty having a Hindi and Muslim wedding, in specific terms to bring it home to the reader, to help the reader understand. There was a bit earlier that I wanted to blockquote but I'll have to see if I can find it, it was about the first girl character, India, and her growing up with bad dreams and sleeptalking.

Hearing aids

Today on the bus, and again on the metro, I saw people around me wearing hearing aids, much like myself. Only they were wearing them to not hear. Not hear the silence, the thoughts of others, the surroundings, the scenery, the bare concrete walls once underground.

My hearing aids are to help me hear. While crossing the split tail of 370 I thought to myself, what bliss to never have to rely on sound, or to live in a silent world.

While getting off at Chinatown, I thought to myself, how pointless the music is.

Angel at my Table

My wife and I compared notes yesterday to see how the movie and the book possibly coincide. Thus far she did run from the classroom, and she has at this point been committed to a mental institution because she yelled at her mom on the day she was to be released from observation at the small time psychiatric ward in town. So she's off to Seacliff. I'm enjoying the writing more now that I'm used to it, and definitely not so hung up on her turns of phrases. Also, as I settle into the world of autobiography, I can appreciate that this is someone else's life, told in their words, and just enjoy the ride. The imporessions, the changes, and the experiences.

Also, as a side note, I've put Wil Wheaton's suggestions on my list of books to read. I'd only read One, unless you count his you might also likes, which gives me one more. I didn't add I, Robot though, I've not been able to get into Asimov, but then I haven't tried since I was a teen. Be that as it may I didn't add to my list, but the others I did. On a side (side) note, related but not on the list, Ray Bradbury is another author I didn't like, I just don't digest his style well, it goes through me and comes out runny and gassy.

Book AND Movie

Now reading An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame. My wife watched the movie and thought it was quite good, so she reserved the book for me.

It's been difficult reading, going from a minimalist deconstructionist last few books, to a foreign used of English, and places I've never heard of, nor relate to, a person I can't relate to, a family situation I can only vaguely relate to, and the very rawness and vulnerability, like a soft girl hating and needing at the same time, which to me is revolting. It's been good though, it's a step further from me and my paradigm than Marya Horbacher's autobiography. At least Marya was tough and disillusioned. In Frame's book, I have to look hard for the crust formed by reality, such as Janet's relationship with Isabel, her freewheeling sister, in which she concedes that her view and expectations of her sister are her own and wouldn't be realized.

I have to add though, that in spite of my discomfort, it's a good journey into a new world, and it's well written, though discordant with my inner rhythm of language and description.