All Quiet on the Western Front

War novel for the win. I thought I'd hate war novels. And war is bad. But these writers see into the truth. Erich Maria Remarque (who is not in fact a girl - Germans are odd) has a wonderful style that speaks plainly, though not unbeautifully, from the point of view of a German soldier during WWI. It is the style that drew me into Les Miserables as well. Perhaps it is the slight stilt translation gives any novel, but the plainness is apropos and starkly highlights the bleak, trench-sunken front. One moment, a simple smoke will captivate the scene and suddenly, the most beautiful prose is dedicated to the dying of horses. The transition isn't even noted, it seems so natural to speak so passionately of war.

Death is the first sign of war. Remarque tosses it off casually, the way war does. In the first several pages, a childhood friend dies. In a hollywood movie, this would have been the climax. The tears would have followed. But in the novel, after consolation in the form of joking reassurances, the childhood friend died and a fellow soldier took his boots. It's life. Remarque showed the brutality and coldness of war in the first few pages to break the reader to the reality. And many people died. That doesn't exactly follow that insensitivity ruled all. Though one by one the narrator's friends died, the last one to go was saved by the narrator and crushed in his arms after carrying him on a broken leg before someone pointed out that he was already dead. Loyalty existed, hidden under death. Remarque shows theme through actions, pointedly placed throughout the story.

Remarque is also a huge fan of repetition. How many times was an account of war, death, camaraderie, smoking, girls, and alcohol followed up by a reminder that every soldier was only 19 or 20 years old? The narrator himself was only 19, recruited by the schoolmaster in his village. 19. 19. So young. I suppose I'm only 19.

Though much is a patchwork of experiences, purposefully blurred to give the impression of sameness, oneness, and meaningless repetition, two scenes stand out.

The first is an example of the dryness in the face of war, especially among the comrades. All the men are standing around talking and smoking, and discussing war. Why? Why are they forced to fight and die? One man plays dumb while one tries to overexplain and jokingly shows the absurdity of war.

The second is a scene with the narrator and a French soldier trapped in a pit together. Out of self defense, the narrator stabs him and has to spend a night and a day with a dying soldier that he killed. He tries everything to fix the man. He swears to find the man's family and apologize, though he knows he'll never follow through. He finds that when it's hand to hand combat, killing is different. And war is cowardly in that way.

Please read it.

I almost cried at the end.

Quote

"To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must write dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfume and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories--science fiction or otherwise. Which means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."
— Ray Bradbury

Something Interesting

I promise whoever reads this that I have read a book this summer. I just haven't logged any of them into my blog. Bad me. Baaad. I've actually been reading and acquiring books like nobody's business. I'm pretty sure book shopping (especially antique book shopping) should be a Class I addiction. I've read books on and off the book list. And one play. More are coming. I even had a book dropped on my lap (well, desk) that I didn't know existed. These are the best kind. It's an account of a psychologist imprisoned at Auschwitz and Dachau during the Holocaust. If it weren't written in such matter-of-fact language and I didn't read this rather short novel in small spurts, I would probably cry. Which is bad in a work setting. The book is focused on the effect of true suffering on the human behavior. It's magnificent. Not just the account, the conclusions pulled from it. It's called Man's Search for Meaning. You can look it up, buy it, or borrow it from me, since I'm keeping the copy that was given to me.

But. The reason that I am blogging today was because I stumbled upon an article that confused me at first. It's about Brave New World and the approach threw me. It is an in-depth article that proves that the novel is not purposed as a defense to bioengineering. In other words, it's a dystopia not a utopia and Huxley was, in fact, proving that the aspects of the society he created are bad. This confused me because I thought "Duh. Who doesn't know that?" In fact, some don't. They fail to see the irony. Sigh. I personally don't want a post-atheistic, pleasure seeking society that makes the pleasures in life devoid of meaning and intellect useless and pain distasteful and love gone. Anyhow, draw your own conclusions:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2uQ2Ne/www.hedweb.com/huxley/bnw.htm

*note: I didn't actually read the article in its entirety. If my conclusions about the article are incorrect, feel free to inform me. Politely.

My Book List

My summer list is narrowing! Ok, I haven't read much yet, don't judge. When I'm not unpacking and catching up on Doctor Who, I'm reading Easy to Kill by (guess who) Agatha Christie. Starting a familiar book is like slipping into a warm bath. I knew I was home as soon as started reading it. I just reorganized my bookshelf and I'm here to tell you that it's more good looking than ever. And one my dear friends at college gave me an American must-read book list to make me get over my aversion to American Literature. The irony is getting too much for me. Here is her list! :

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Catcher in the Rye
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
4. Fahrenheit 451
5. Invisible Man
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
7. The House on Mango Street
8. The Sound and the Fury
9. Catch-22
10. Call of the Wild (okay, this is not really in my top 10, but I'm shocked at how many people haven't read it!)

I of course have read Mockingbird, 451, Huck Finn, Mango Street and Call of the Wild, but the rest are yet to be read. And at least 3 or 4 of them are on my big list. Score! So here is my list forming for the summer.

1. Oedipus Rex

2. Cuckoo's Nest

3. Invisible Man

4. Sound and the Fury

5. Catcher in the Rye

6. Catch 22

7. Shakespeare

Not that anyone reading this will really care, but it makes me feel better to make a list now and then. And I've decided to add to my repertoire of memorized Shakespearean monologues/soliloquies. Suggestions welcome. :)

Prosody

For some reason, I feel melancholy this evening. Don't read too much into it, but it's here. So I have some poetry, two of my favorites in fact, to illustrate my mood.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high pil`d books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,	5
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,	10
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. John Keats Too bad I fail at formating on blogspot.

Research paper. Minus the Research. On electronic paper.

Hi.

My name is Melora.

I'm an English major.

And I think the Bible is a pretty amazing piece of literature.

Now, this isn't just because I'm a Christian, though this is certainly true. The Bible is objectively an amazing piece of literature. For one, it's the only piece of ancient literature consistently read by people who don't have a doctorate in literature or archaeology. Now, I have no sources to back me up in this..essay..., but most consider, say, The Canterbury Tales or "Caedmon's Hymn", or gasp, Shakespeare to be fairly ancient. Well, those are still centuries into the C.E. Think earlier. The Odessey? Plato? Aristotle? Congratulations! We've reached before Jesus' birth, into the B.C.E. Now think earlier. Wait...weren't there only cave drawings? That's an exaggeration, but the truth is that the general knowledge of Great Works before the Greek/Roman era is sketchy at best. Except, for the most part, the Bible. Regardless of the date the early works were actually written, the Bible traces a history from the beginning of time to roughly 95 A.D. which has been proved fairly accurate from archaeological sites and other ancient civilization's documents. Whether most of Genesis was literal, physical, metaphysical, figurative, allegorical, grammatical, or metaphorical, an Egyptian find dates an "Israelite nation" with in its borders around the time of the supposed Exodus. But we like to argue, so let's say that the Bible is mythology and fiction and simply based very loosely around real world events.Still, the quantity and quality of the Bible far outweighs any other ancient document. Sometime, take a look at the Israelite and monk scribe process. It's quite a painstaking procedure and a rather fascinating process. The accuracy is so complete that the Dead Sea scrolls only differ in a couple words from the copies we have today. The accuracy rate in major Greek/Roman works pales by comparison.

Now, say you aren't very impressed by all that above. You must be a huge Homer fan or someone who reads way too many ancient documents for your own good. (I understand, I have Caedmon's hymn on the background of my computer as well.) Maybe - hopefully - this appreciation of literature in general will compel you to look twice at the content of the Bible. Let's say Genesis and Exodus and even Numbers and Joshua is pure mythology. Wow. Those are some awesome stories. Actually, the creation myth has strong similarities with the Enuma Elish and Greek/Roman myth. Also the "Noah and the Flood" story is similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Please, just imagine the 10 plagues for a minute (or ten). A George Lucas movie version might have a larger revenue than 2012. Actually, it would be much better. The stories in the Bible are epic. And I think I'm gonna pick on Leviticus for a second. Yeah, it's not the funnest book to read in the Bible. (Or most fun. Pick your poison.) But the laws actually make sense. The animals the Israelites were restricted from eating are commonly associated with disease that can be combated by measures like fully cooking food - knowledge and practices that wouldn't be fully observed centuries ago. The laws on letting the lands rest every 7 years is pretty smart too. The problem of crops stripping the soil of nutrients wasn't recognized and dealt with by crop rotation until the last several centuries. A field left sallow for a year would help restore the nutrients. All of the laws also focus on the well-being of the community, which practically is a very good thing. The Bible also contains many different literature forms such as poetry, which is quite good. It's overarching and connecting theme from book to book and century to century is staggering. Even Animorphs lost it eventuutally. The Bible, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, depicts the same God over and over. That amount of consistency and dedication should impress anyone at least a little bit.

No, the Bible is not the only ancient religious text in the world. And I'm not trying to prove that other ancient texts aren't awesome or worthy of mention. But the Bible deserves recognition as a piece of literature that has withstood the test of time and has literary merit and, dare I say, beauty in its text. No matter what you think of Christianity, at least consider its text to be one of significant literary merit.

Thank you, Shakira

Shakira gave me the greatest metaphor for my life at the moment. Literary lesson for today: poetry can be found anywhere. Right Smokebullets?

I didn't come on to rave about Woka Woka, but I do want to say that now is the time to start compiling my summer reading list.

It will reach my 50 book goal.

It will include at least 5 plays (for a burgeoning theatre major I'm very lacking in this area).

It will include at least skimming over Les Mis again.

It will include my favorite poet of the moment: Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Saying all this, any suggestions?

I also just realized I haven't actually shared my 100 book list for your perusal and purveyance. I should do that.

Another side note: next semester I will be taking Advanced Composition and Renaissance and 17th Century Literature (minus Shakespeare), and I am very excited for both classes.