A poignant and triumphant tale of a great creature in the wild. He feels the bitterness and savagery of men and his pack, there has been a dividing liA poignant and triumphant tale of a great creature in the wild. He feels the bitterness and savagery of men and his pack, there has been a dividing line in his relations with humans by no fault but their own due to their constant usage of this canine Buck in work, in pulling in the snow, they have not shown any kindness, but there is hope he will soon be blessed with some. One man shows a kindness that helps Buck, who has had a life of toil and enduring of hardships, its a warming to the heart to see man and animal bonded in humility and kindness. Humans can be cruel and unkind to each other, and many guilty of worser crimes to animals in the wild and those under their control as a pet, they are more vulnerable and have no voice. Jack London here has given them a voice in this story and White Fang. He has successfully placed us in their point of view, in the shoes of the main protagonist Buck. An inspiring story that will continue to last through time. Jack London is another author that I recently hold high up there in the sphere of great writers, he writes with great insight into the world, the behaviours, the human condition and here the animal dilemma. I read this story way too late in my life, I only wished that I learned of these great stories of his when i was in my youth. This story has revived for me the importance of justice and kindness to the animal kingdom and the freedom to an animal of the wild. Joe Lansdale an author, I have praised many times due to his similar storytelling of great human stories and wonderful character creations, recommends this author and has said in an interview that Jack London had inspired him in his youth as a writer and I can now see why. If all this is not enough reason to read this or to remind one of its greatness, then read what the author E. L. Doctorow said in his preface of this story...
"Man and dog are here together put back into prehistory, one of the moments of metaphorical abutment in which the book abounds. The law of the club and the law of the fang are one and the same, which is to say that in this primeval life of nature man and dog are morally indistinguishable-the call of the wild calls us all. We are dealing in this instance with not a literal dog but a mythopoetic thesis.
It is perhaps his fatherless life of bitter self-reliance in late-nineteenth-century America that he transmutes here-though this is not the way it does us any good to read it. It seems more relevantly his mordant parable of the thinness of civilisation, the brutality ready to spring up through our institutions, the failure of the human race to evolve truly from its primeval beginnings. It derives from Jack London's Marxism the idea of the material control of our natures, and from his Darwinism the convictions that life triumphant belongs to the most fit. This is not a sweet idea for a book, it is rather the kind of concept to justify tyrannies and the need of repressive social institutions to keep people from tearing themselves to bits. But London's Nietzchean superdog has our admiration, if the truth be told. For as grim as its implications are, the tale never forgets its sources as a magazine frontier romance. It leaves us with satisfaction as its outcome, a story well and truly told. It is Jack London's hack genius that makes us cheer for his Buck and want to lope with him in happy, savage honor back to the wild, running and howling with the pack."
Now for some great paragraphs from this story.
“Bucks first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilisation and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb was in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.”
“And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations feel from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And when, on the still, cold nights, he pointed his nose at the star and howled long and wolf like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark. Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is, the ancient song surged through him and he came into his own again; and he came because men had found a yellow metal in the North…”
“The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce conditions of the trial life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth. His newborn cunning gave him poise and control. He was too busy adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease, and not only did he not pick fights, but he avoided them whenever possible. A certain deliberateness characterized his attitude. He was not prone to rashness and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and Spitz he betrayed no impatience, shunned all offensive acts.”
“All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the surrounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill-all this was Buck’s, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood. There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the solider, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.”
“It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans were aware of it. Each day rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by three in the morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole long day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from al the land, fraught with the joy of living. It came from the things that lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had not moved during the long months of frost. The sap was rising in the pines. The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rusted forth into the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in the forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked the wild fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the air.”
“This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he was the ideal master. Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs from a sense of duty and business expediency; he was to the welfare of his as if they were his own children, because he could not help it. And he saw further. He never forgot kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to sit down for a long talk with them (gas he called it) was as much his delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck’s head roughly between his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck’s, of shaking him back and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love names. Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body so great was its ecstasy. And when, released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, “God! You can all but speak!”
“The blood longing became stronger than ever before. He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived. Because all of this he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised itself in all his movements, was apparent in the play of very muscle, spoke plainly as speak in the way he carried himself, and made his glorious furry coat if anything more glorious. But for the stray brown on his muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran midmost down his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger than the largest of the breed. From his St. Bernard father he had inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who had given shape to that size and weight. His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, save that it was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head, somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale.”
“There is a patience of the wild-dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself-that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belong peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd….”
This was an average feast of sorts. Continental beautiful settings, tragic and problem riddled characters this is successfully written with. The writinThis was an average feast of sorts. Continental beautiful settings, tragic and problem riddled characters this is successfully written with. The writing was not on a whole of the quality that I expected from Hemingway, there was great paragraphs scattered around in parts of the story. There was a few times that the story bored me, one example was not being stimulated by the bull fighting, which I feel is animal cruelty passed as a culture and entertainment, so my mind strayed to more interesting thoughts. The first half of the story started off with short brief sentences that accounted for the goings on around the main character and his acquaintances. His cast of characters have memorable qualities, good and bad, that provides an engaging read into a chapter of the human conditions of a few. I did feel the French and Spanish atmosphere. The fiesta and the bull fight takes centre stage and then disappears from the scene, while all the travel and adventure passes will a mans love for a woman transcend from being a acquaintanceship into a more solid relationship of mutual love?
A first person narrative, told through the eyes of an ordinary man a moviegoer. He works and in his spare time goes to movies soley or with women. He taA first person narrative, told through the eyes of an ordinary man a moviegoer. He works and in his spare time goes to movies soley or with women. He talks of his searching, for that something else in life and he has long talks with his aunt, she's wise and gives him the advice he needs. This is set in the town of Gentilly, an annual Carnival is to take place while all this soul searching of the main character occurs. I found it at times humorous, here and there it did lull a bit, it is a slow burner of a read that may appeal to a certain moviegoer crowd of readers, a nostalgic appeal. You will find some good writing within this story, a few examples in these excerpts.
"Life in Gentilly is very peaceful. I manage a small branch office of my uncle’s brokerage firm. My home is the basement apartment of a raised bungalow belonging to Mrs Schexnaydre, the widow of a fireman. I am a model tenant and a model citizen and take pleasure in doing all that is expected of me. My wallet is full of identity cards, library cards, credit cards. Last year I purchased a flat olive-drab strongbox, very smooth and heavily built with double walls for fire protection, in which I placed my birth certificate, college diploma, honorable discharge, G.I. insurance, a few stock certificates, and my inheritance: a deed to ten acres of a defunct duck club down in St Bernard Parish, the only relic of my father’s many enthusiasms"
"My aunt has done a great deal for me. When my father was killed, my mother, who had been a trained nurse, went back to her hospital in Biloxi. My aunt offered to provide my education. As a consequence much of the past fifteen years has been spent in her house. She is really my great aunt."
"To tell the absolute truth, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed in Walter’s company. Whenever I’m with him, I feel the stretch of the old tightrope, the necessity of living up to the friendship of friendships, of cultivating an intimacy beyond words. The fact is we have little to say to each other. There is only this thick sympathetic silence between us. We are comrades, true, but somewhat embarrassed comrades. It is probably my fault. For years now I have had no friends. I spend my entire time working, making money, going to movies and seeking the company of women."
"Her name is Sharon Kincaid and she comes from Eufala, Alabama........ She is a good-sized girl, at least five feet six and a hundred and thirty-five pounds—as big as a majorette—and her face is a little too short and pert, like one of those Renoir girls, and her eyes a little too yellow. Yet she has the most fearful soap-clean good looks. Her bottom is so beautiful that once as she crossed the room to the cooler I felt my eyes smart with tears of gratitude. She is one of those village beauties of which the South is so prodigal. From the sleaziest house in the sleaziest town, from the loins of redneck pa and rockface ma spring these lovelies, these rosy-cheeked Anglo-Saxon lovelies, by the million. They are commoner than sparrows, and like sparrows they are at home in the streets, in the parks, on doorsteps. No one marvels at them; no one holds them dear. They flush out of their nests first thing and alight in the cities to stay, and no one misses them. Even their men pay no attention to them, anyhow far less attention than they pay to money. But I marvel at them; I miss them; I hold them dear."
"My little red MG, however, is an exception to the rule. It is a miserable vehicle actually, with not a single virtue save one: it is immune to the malaise. You have no idea what happiness Marcia and I experienced as soon as we found ourselves spinning along the highway in this bright little beetle. We looked at each other in astonishment: the malaise was gone! We sat out in the world, out in the thick summer air between sky and earth. The noise was deafening, the wind was like a hurricane; straight ahead the grains of the concrete rushed at us like mountains."
"Yet loves revives as we spin homewards along the coast through the early evening. Joy and sadness come by turns, I know now. Beauty and bravery make you sad, Sharon’s beauty and my aunt’s bravery, and victory breaks your heart. But life goes on and on we go, spinning along the coast in a violet light, past Howard Johnson’s and the motels and the children’s carnival. We pull into a bay and have a drink under the stars. It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh."
Excerpt from the afterword. "My first wife is the true account of Jakob Wesserman's first marriage to Julie Speyer of Vienna, with almost nothing omittExcerpt from the afterword. "My first wife is the true account of Jakob Wesserman's first marriage to Julie Speyer of Vienna, with almost nothing omitted or changed."
When reading this I was unaware of this truth, this fact makes the story more compelling of a well written story. Uncomplicated writing where the words flow of the age into an enjoyable effervescent story. With the stories humble content of only a few cast of characters one man and two women he has captured my attention and hooked me right from the first paragraph. A credit to Penguin publishers for bringing this to my attention for review and re-printing this with a great translation from the German language in a wonderful quality presentation in the printing and binding. This a story for any era written in the 1920′s to 1930′s that holds no Lessening of its great reading due to age.The first wife is a character who you would wish to have a very uneventful end due to her entrapment, lies and trickery. The end product of reading this could be the putting off of marriage for many readers who are wanting to be married, they may reconsider due to the whole commitment and the legalities that the main protagonist found himself lost in.
I would have not expected to like this story so much right to the end. Great writing and he connects with the reader a cut above many modern writings. A very human tragedy spilling out on the pages that in the end was a tale from the authors real life, that holds close to his heart and gives the story that extra life to it. Due to the authors death there was never a continuation of the main protagonists life. I would have loved to see how his future panned out in the pursuit of love and happiness. This was written in the days of Freud being alive and writing and I sense a physiological approach to the writing here with questions on relationships, trust, and love and success and failure as a writer or any man in Vienna of that time. One question I leave with the possible reader of this story is.. Did Alexandre tame the wild Ganna?
"There, in the valley that had become home to us, we were allowed to forget the world in flames. We weren't mocking the war; rather it became subsumed in nature. When the guns' thunder boomed up to us out of the south, it sounded like God's anger about a humanity that vandalized his creation; the glaciated peaks were like bolted green gates at which human dying stopped. Everything belonged to the two of us, the forests, the lakes, the bridges, the white footpaths. There were starlit evenings when the trembling firmament sprinkled golden flakes on the bed of our love, and rainy nights that seemed they must quench all the flaring hatred of the world."
"All together, they would make up an uninterrupted conversation going over many days. Put on record, they would represent the exhausting and perspective less efforts of two people to get something from one another that it wasn't in the others power to give. One seeks to tear a band; the other, seeing belatedly how cracked and holey it is, wants to patch it. One wants to leave the cold hearth; the other claims the fire is still burning, a holy flame, to extinguish which were an act of godliness. One is coming to terms with the past; the other won't accept the reckoning and is whimpering for more credit. Conversations as old as the world, as sterile as pebbles, as agonizing as toothache. Here, they were given a new point and terrible amplitude by Ganna's character and methods."
"Caught in this schism, she was ever more dissatisfied, excitable, disputatious, confused, bewildered. Humanity, where she was concerned, was divided into two camps: there were her supporters and her opponents. And in the middle stood this light-some guides to fortune and triumph,the lawyers. Of course that was only true of those lawyers she had taken on; those of the other side were the dregs of mankind."
"Not a single chink of light. A hopeless tangle of proposals, measures, discussions, euphemisms, accusations, conjectures, cunning distortions, coarseness and hair-splitting. The lawyers inundate each other with letters, inundate their clients with letters, inundate each other with more letters. Typewriters clatter, telegraphs click, telephones bleat, messengers run- each of the parties involved is raking it in, all except the one that has to pay for such endeavor, the costs of the materials and the nervous strain with his own dearly acquired money, his tranquility, his blood and his life, and who gets nothing return except- more paper. And always at the back of everything-Ganna, unmoved, immovable and brazen, the deceptive perhaps always on her lips, the rigid No in her heart, the goddess of discord like the grim Ate, misconceived daughter of Zeus. Undaunted and indefatigable, she shores up her mad world, which has so surprisingly many points of contact with the real world and at the same time bears the stigma of doom."
A lake with a tragic past, a melancholy existence of a family a tragic story on loss, identity, sisterhood, growth and realisation. Narrated though a yA lake with a tragic past, a melancholy existence of a family a tragic story on loss, identity, sisterhood, growth and realisation. Narrated though a younger sister of two sisters she is more placid more isolated and marvels and looks at the natural world around her and her aunt who comes to look after her she marvels at her resemblance of her long lost mother. She tries to deal with the facts of her families fate and her being left behind by woman, mothers and grandmothers, and embraces this new figure in her life her aunt. She undertakes a transcending journey out of isolation into realisation and freedom from the shackles and the darkness that surrounds the lake.
Sisters that were quiet and observant, one more reserved than the other and who felt not the need for friends. Their misfortunes brought about attention from some in the community of being misunderstood and did not leave the family to their own devices through their grief over loss and their rebuilding of love and trusts.
Haunting and poetically written wonderful memorable tale. A story that demands attentive reading, provides food for thought, showcasing the wonders that illuminate the world and the loss that linger in the breasts of those that remain behind. A must-read!
"Perhaps we all awaited a resurrection. Perhaps we expected a train to leap out of the water, caboose foremost, as if in a movie run backward and then to continue across the bridge. The passengers would arrive sounder than they departed, accustomed to the depth, serene about their restoration to the light, disembarking at the station in Fingerbone with a calm that quieted the astonishment of friends. Say that this resurrection was general enough to include my grandmother and Helen, my mother. Say that Helen lifted our hair from our napes with her cold hands and gave us strawberries from her purse. Say that my grandmother pecked our brows with her whiskery lips and then all of them went down the road to our house, my grandfather, youngish and high-pocketed, just outside their conversation like a difficult memory or a ghost. Then Lucille and I could run off to the woods, leaving them to talk of old times and make sandwiches for lunch and show each other snapshots."
""Where's Lucille?" [says Sylvie to Ruth, having woken up on a bench.] "Home," [says Ruth.] "Well, that's fine," Sylvie said. "I'm glad to have a chance to talk to you. You're so quiet, it's hard to know what you think." Sylvie had stood up, and we began to walk toward home. "I suppose I don't know what I think." This confession embarrassed me. It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible--incompletely or minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares. But my allusion to this feeling of ghostliness sounded peculiar, and sweat started all over my body, convicting me on the spot of gross corporeality. "Well, maybe that will change," Sylvie said. We walked a while without speaking. "Maybe it won't." I dropped a step behind and watched her face. She always spoke to me in the voice of an adult dispensing wisdom. I wanted to ask her if she knew what she thought, and if so, what the experience of that sort of knowledge was like, and if not, whether she too felt ghostly as I imagined she must."
"For a while she [Lucille] sang "Mockingbird Hill," and then she sat down beside me in our ruined stronghold, never still, never accepting that all our human boundaries were overrun. Lucille would tell this story differently. She would say I fell asleep, but I did not. I simply let the darkness in the sky become coextensive with the darkness in my skull and bowels and bones. Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world's true workings. The nerves and the brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away, the curve of the back and the swing of the coat so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable. Say that my mother was as tall as a man, and that she sometimes set me on her shoulders, so that I could splash my hands in the cold leaves above our heads. Say that my grandmother sang in her throat while she sat on her bed and we laced up her big black shoes. Such details are merely accidental. Who could know but us? And since their thoughts were bent upon other ghosts than ours, other darknesses than we had seen, why must we be left, the survivors picking among flotsam, among the small, unnoticed, unvalued clutter that was all that remained when they vanished, that only catastrophe made notable? Darkness is the only solvent. While it was dark, despite Lucille's pacing and whistling, and despite what must have been dreams (since even Sylvie came to haunt me), it seemed to me that there need not be relic, remnant, margin, residue, memento, bequest, memory, thought, track or trace if only the darkness could be perfect and permanent."
"I remember Sylvie walking through the house with a scarf tied around her hair, carrying a broom. Yet this was the time that leaves began to gather in the corners. There were leaves that had been through the winter, some of them worn to a net of veins. There were scraps of paper among them, crisp and strained from their mingling in the cold brown liquors of decay and regeneration, and on these scraps there were sometimes words. One read Powers Meet, and another, which had been the flap of an envelope, had a penciled message in an anonymous hand: I think of you. Perhaps Sylvie when she swept took care not to molest them. Perhaps she sensed a Delphic niceness in the scattering of these leaves and paper, here and not elsewhere, thus and not otherwise."
"Her hair, which was as black as the sky, and so long that it swept after her, a wind in the grass, her fingers, which were sky black and so fine and slender that they were only cold touch like drops of rain, her step, which was so silent that people were surprised when they even thought they heard it, she would be transformed by the growth of light into a mortal child. And, when she stood at the bright window, she would find that the world was gone, the orchard was gone, her mother and grandmother and aunts were gone. Like Noah's wife on the tenth or fifteenth night of rain, she would stand in the window and realize that the world was really lost. And those outside would scarcely know her, so sadly was she changed. Before she had been fleshed in air, and clothed in nakedness, and mantled in cold, and her very bones were only slender things like shards of ice. She had haunted the orchard out of preference, but she could walk into the lake without ripple or displacement, and sail up the air invisibly as heat. And now, lost to her kind, she would almost forget them, and she would feed coarse food to her coarse flesh and be almost satisfied. If I had stayed there, I might have discovered other things. For example, I was hungry enough to begin to learn that hunger has its pleasures, and I was happily at ease in the dark. And, in general, I could feel that I was breaking the tethers of need, one by one."
"It is true that one is always aware of the lake in Fingerbone, or the deeps of the lake, the lightless, airless waters below. When the ground is plowed in the spring, cut and laid open, what exhales from the furrows but the same, sharp, watery smell. The wind is watery, and all the pumps and creeks and ditches smell of water unalloyed by any other element. At the foundation is the old lake, which is smothered and nameless and altogether black. Then there is Fingerbone, the lake of charts and photographs, which is permeated by sunlight and sustains green life and innumerable fish, and in which one can look down in the shadow of a dock and see stony, earthy bottom, more or less as one sees dry ground. And above that, the lake that rises in the spring and turns the grass dark and coarse as reeds. And above that the water suspended in sunlight, sharp as the breath of an animal, which brims inside the circle of mountains."
"This perfect quiet had settled into their house after the death of their father. That event had troubled the very medium of their lives. Time and air and sunlight bore wave and wave of shock, until all the shock was spent, and time and space and light grew still again and nothing seemed to tremble, and nothing seemed to lean. The disaster had fallen out of sight, like the train itself, and if the calm that followed it was not greater than the calm that came before it, it had seemed so. And the dear ordinary had healed as seamlessly as an image on water. "
"She was then a magisterial woman, not only because of her height and her large, sharp face, not only because of her upbringing, but also because it suited her purpose, to be what she seemed to be so that her children would never be startled or surprised, and to take on all the postures and vestments of matron, to differentiate her life from theirs, so that her children would never feel intruded upon. Her love for them was utter and equal, her government of them generous and absolute. She was constant as daylight, and she would be unremarked as daylight, just to watch the calm inwardness of their faces. what was it like. One evening one summer she went out to the garden. The earth in the rows was light and soft as cinders, pale clay yellow, and the trees and plants were ripe, ordinary green and full of comfortable rustlings. And above the pale earth and bright trees the sky was the dark blue of ashes. As she knelt in the rows she heard the hollyhocks thump against the shed wall. She felt the hair lifted from her neck by a swift, watery wind, and she saw the trees fill with wind and heard their trunks creak like masts. She burrowed her hand under a potato plant and felt gingerly for the new potatoes in their dry net of roots, smooth as eggs. She put them in her apron and walked back to the house thinking, what have I seen, what have I seen. The earth and the sky and the garden, not as they always are. And she saw her daughters faces not as they always were, or as other people's were, and she was quiet and aloof and watchful, not to startle the strangeness away. She had never taught them to be kind to her."
"We had been assured by our elders that intelligence was a family trait. All my kin and fore bears were people of substance or remarkable intellect, though somehow none of them had prospered in the world. Too bookish, my grandmother said with tart pride, and Lucille and I read constantly to forestall criticism, anticipating failure. If my family were not as intelligent as we were pleased to pretend, this was an innocent deception, for it was a matter of indifference to everybody whether we were intelligent or not. People always interpreted our slightly formal manner and our quiet tastes as a sign that we wished to stay a little apart. This was a matter of indifference, also, and we had out wish."
"She would have considered already the fact that I had never made a friend in my life. Until recently, neither had she. We had really never had any use for friends or conventional amusements. We had spent our lives watching and listening with the constant sharp attention of children lost in the dark. It seemed that we were bewildering lost in a landscape that, with any light at all, would be wholly familiar. What to make of sounds and shapes, and where to put our feet. So little fell upon our senses, and all of that was suspect."
"Abandoned homesteads like this one were rare, however, so perhaps all the tales of perished settlers were at root one tale, carried off one every direction the way one cry of alarm is carried among birds through the whole of the woods and even the sky. It might have been this house that peopled all these mountains. When it broke it might have cast them invisibly into the wind, like spores, thousands from one drab husk, or millions, for there was no reason to believe that anyone ever had heard all the tales of unsheltered folk that were in these mountains, or that anyone ever would."
"Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery. When one looks from inside at a lighted window, or looks from above at the lake, one sees the image of oneself in a lighted room, the image of oneself among trees and sky-the deception is obvious, but flattering all the same. When one looks from the darkness into the light, however, one sees all the difference between here and there, this and that."
"What is thought, after all, what is dreaming, but swim and flow, and the images they seem to animate? The images are the worst of it. It would be terrible to stand outside in the dark and watch a woman in a lighted room studying her face in a window, and to throw a stone at her, shattering the glass, and then to watch the window knit itself up again and the bright bits of lip and throat and hair piece themselves seamlessly again into that unknown, indifferent woman. It would be terrible to see a shattered mirror heal to show a dreaming woman tucking up her hair. And here we find our great affinity with water, for like reflections on water our thoughts will suffer no changing shock, no permanent displacement. They mock us with their seeming slightness. If they were more substantial-if they had weight and took up space-they would sink or be carrier away in the general flux. But they persist, outside the brisk and ruinous energies of the world. I think it must have been my mothers plan to rupture this bright surface, to sail beneath into very blackness, but here she was, wherever my eyes fell, and behind my eyes, whole and in fragments, a thousand images of one gesture, never dispelled but rising always, inevitably, like a drowned woman."
"I cannot taste a cup of water but recall that the eye of the lake is my grandfather's, and that the lake's heavy, blind, encumbering waters composed my mother's limbs and weighed her garments and stopped her breath and stopped her sight. There is remembrance, and communion, altogether human and unhallowed. For families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs out of all these sorrows and sit in the porches and sing them on mild evenings. Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs, and every song recalls a thousand sorrows, and so they are infinite in number, and all the same."
The wonderful stories within the Dubliners have stood the test of time and provided a wonderful eye-opening glimpse a retrospective look through the The wonderful stories within the Dubliners have stood the test of time and provided a wonderful eye-opening glimpse a retrospective look through the keyhole of lives in Dublin. The introduction to this new edition adequately describes ‘Dubliners’ by the writer Colm Toibin.
“That idea of shabby, solitary and secretive lives-men moving alone, their lives half fueled by alcohol, men trapped in their work, living in a mean boarding house, or in bare rooms, men with some education but scant hope- makes its way into the core of the stories at the center of Dubliners- ‘Two Gallants’, ‘The Boarding House’, ‘A Little Cloud’, ‘Counterparts’, ‘A Painful Case’ and ‘Grace’.
As he drew these men, offered them little comfort and tiny moments of possibility, Joyce was concerned not with some dark vision he had of mankind and our fate in the world but rather with the individual self he named and made in all its particularity and privacy. The Self’s deep preoccupations, the isolation of the individual consciousness, which keeps so much concealed, were what he wished to dramatize. The self ready to feel fear or remorse, contempt or disloyalty, bravery or timidity; the self ready to notice everything except that there was no escape from the self, or indeed from the dilapidated city; these were his subjects.”
“Dubliners shows a city filled with the colors and shades of autumn and winter. It offers images powerful enough to be repudiated with real comic energy in Ulysses.”
Taken from a great introduction written by Colm Toibin in the new edition published by Canongate Books. Purchase @ www.canongate.tv
James Joyce wrote in a letter to a publisher in May 1906 what he had in mind when he composed the stories:
My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to be the center of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentiment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard.
I have reviewed the short stories that I liked the most and provided excerpts.
The Boarding House
Mrs Mooney determined and forbearing marries a man that turns out to be a drunkard and who spiraled them headlong into debt. She departs the relationship and set up a business of her own a boarding house. She was referred to as ‘Madam.’ Her cunning character, firmness and sternness testified to the fact that she was not to be melded with.
She had a son and daughter. Jack was known to be of hard character and Polly a girl slim of nineteen years of age. Polly must have been quite attractive as her mother seems to have been, and still is in this story, trying to keep her from the clutches of keen men’s hands and eyes.
Mrs Mooney had gathered knowledge of a certain situation in her midst right under her nose. She observed their body language and flirtations, and waited for her moment to descend upon the guilt parties. This excerpt describes her way of dealing with matters.
“She dealt with moral problems as a clever deals with meat.”
She feels this as a case of abused hospitality in her house. There is only reparation she seeks from one person.
Due to the statement.
“Dublin is such a small city everyone know everyone else’s business.”
It’s clear the pressures people felt in a rather small and religious environment.
Free smiling and bad behavior between families and loved ones travels amongst the citizens.
This story provides a little peak into the keyhole of working families riddled with troubles and shows how some women were of strong character and independent businesswomen in a Dublin that had many poor people in strife struggling to get by with politics and religion.
This are very human characters with fears and flaws they have regard for honor and what others may think of their behavior. I would love to know of the outcome of the two parties concerned and how it all paned out over the years.
The Sisters
The main character a young man was long time friend with a priest who becomes ill and dies and we hear of his struggle to come to terms with loss and death issue. Paralysis and the feeling of it, he mentions…
“He had often said to me.” I am not long for this world, and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.”
On his day of burial they talk with the priests presence of his loosing grip with himself and possible his faith and the decline of his mental state.
This story looks at loss and belief and the behavior of some from the community and their regard for religion, the priest and the community as a whole.
“In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas. But the Gary face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a murmuring voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle.
But then I remembered that I had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.”
An Encounter
A story of youth and adventure. One particular boy loves to escape in American wild west
fiction while under the influence of a more religious way.
During the summer holiday they have a little meeting of fun a few pals in arms, they stroll to the dockside to the barges. This excerpt describes some of what they see..
“We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin’s commerce- the barges signalled from far away by their curls of wooly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big-white sailing-vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay.”
They encounter upon a strange man who talks of greatness of youth to them and being a schoolboy of literature and girls. The boys make up names for themselves and tread careful with this strange encounter. One boy feels singled out as the other get more attention. When it’s all over their encounter they do return safely from their little adventure.
“A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under it’s influence, difference of culture and constitution were waived. We banded ourselves together, some bodly, some in jest and some almost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The adventures related in the literature of the wild west were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened dots of escape. I liked better some American detective (novels) stories which were traversed from time to time by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they were circulated secretly at school.”
“But when the restraining influence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me.”
Araby
A story of a boys infatuation of a neighbor a young girl. He does not know how to deal with his feelings or how to communicate with her what he feels. He must attend and unexpected invite to a bazaar at Araby. As someone tries to hinder him and delay him from getting there he finds he also needs to practice patience with the matter. His uncle eventually manages to release him to his meeting but with some delay. When he does arrive to the bazaar most things have closed for business and it seems the lovely girl of his keen eye has either stood him up or was he too late?
“When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown somber the space of sky above us was the color of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odors arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas.”
“Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to poor itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”
“The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me.”
Eveline
Eveline just over nineteen has plenty of duties and responsibilities in her home, taking care of the plunger siblings and her father filling her mothers job. She fears at times due to her fathers violence in the past with her mother. She wishes to be free and marry with a love far from this duty. When she comes to the crunch and planning her departure from this family of hers she finds that her life with these duties was not wholly miserable and undesirable.
At the back of her mind and in her heart she feels she has some responsibility and remembers her talk with her promises and her dead mothers wishes.
When push comes to shove, when she is at the brink of departure and needs to make a decision will she flee to Buenos Ayres by sea with her love Frank or stay at home with her family?
“Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaving her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odor of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could…..
As she mused the pitiful vision of her mothers life laid it spell on the very quick of her being- that life commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother’s voice saying constantly with foolish insistence:
-Derevaun Seraun!
Derevaun Seraun!.”
“A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:
-come!
All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.
-”Come!” “
Two Gallants
This story opens up with a wonderful paragraph..
“The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets. The streets, shuttered for the repose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily colored crowd. Like illuminated pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their tall poles upon the living texture below which, changing shape and hue increasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging increasing murmur.”
Two friends have a bet on their chance with a woman. One friend is different from the other in character and has had more experience with women in the past or so he says as he is still single.
“This vision made him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit. He was tired of knocking about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts and intrigues. He would be thirty-one in November. Would he never get a good job? Would he never have a home of his own? He thought how pleasant it would be to have a warm fire to sit by ad a good dinner to sit down to. He had walked the streets long enough with friends and with girls.
He knew what those friends were worth: he knew the girls too. Experience had embittered his heart against the world. But all hope had not left him. He felt better after having eaten than he had felt before, less weary of his life, less vanquished in spirit. He might yet be able to settle down in some smug corner and live happily if he could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little of the ready.”
Little Cloud
A young man feels the hard times in Dublin. He is to go to London and work for a press. It seems a friend makes him feel envy and jealous due to his freedom from ties and travels of the world for work. He is stuck in the house with a woman and child in debt. Furniture on rental and is having feelings of melancholy in not being free and in more wealthier shores.
A Painful Case
Man with no companions, nor friends, church nor creed. He is quite a lonely chap. Possibly by choice. In this story he does find some glitter in the eye of a girl. They strike up a familiarity and meet regularly. He finds some possible a kind of happiness but he chooses to break it off.
He feels regret in his breaking off and the pain with the loss of the love.
Time passes and matters worsen for him, news of a painful case comes to his knowledge.
“While they talked he tried to fix her permanently in his memory. When he learned that the young girl beside her was her daughter he judged her to be a year or so younger than himself. Her face, which must have been handsome, had remained intelligent. It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The eyes were very dark blue and steady. Their gaze began with a defiant swoon of the pupil into the iris, revealing for an instant a temperament of great sensibility. The pupil asserted itself quickly, this half-disclosed nature fell again under the reign of prudence, and her astrakhan jacket, moulding a bosom of a certain fulness, struck the note of defiance more definitely.”
The Dead
“A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel’s face. It was true that he wrote a literary column every Wednesday in the Daily Express, for which he was paid fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West Briton surely. The books he received for review were almost more welcome than the paltry cheque. He loved to feel the covers and turn over the pages of newly printed books. Nearly every day when his teaching in the college was ended he used to wander down the quays to the second-hand booksellers, to Hickey’s on Bachelor’s Walk, to Webb’s or Massey’s on Aston’s Quay, or to O’Clohissy’s in the by-street. He did know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature was above politics.”
Well I tell you one thing she can write. This woman was of exceptional cleverness and writes of characters of her era and ones that live around us nowWell I tell you one thing she can write. This woman was of exceptional cleverness and writes of characters of her era and ones that live around us now. She rights of the human condition and the darkness of the heart. These story have humour thrown in she tries to give us a view of how we behave and how insanely stupid and careless we can be. How love blinds and evil destroys, how good can only prosper. She writes of parenthood, guilt, obsession, control freaks, the sick, the despondent, vengeance, redemption, love, compassion and love. She has been said to be a catholic writer and mentions God, Jesus and themes of redemption. She does not throw it down your throat but adds light on how people behave. There are a few stories here that that have characters who behave in a fascist manner and used words, N words, that readers might find offensive. The only reason, her being a catholic, in writing with these words and characters can only be to shock and show the reader how one can look like from the outside. She was capable of so much more, died at a young age of 39 due to Lupus. A gifted writer on the horror and joys of our behaviour as people. Think of some of Stephen Kings stories but realistically told.
I listened to this on audiobook via audible.com and was really a wonderful listen, it had quite a few voices with southern accents that added to making it enjoyable and easy listening. I am also going to read these again in another book where she includes these storirs and others. A completed works on ebook The Complete Stories . Once I have read that edition I will give a breakdown of each story. [image] [image] There is a documentary and the review at my webpage here. ...more
Dahl's imagination and writing skill is masterful. He transports many of us to wonderful fun worlds of adventure and peculiarity with characters that Dahl's imagination and writing skill is masterful. He transports many of us to wonderful fun worlds of adventure and peculiarity with characters that every child would love to meet. A conjurer of great bedtime stories and memories of being young and learning to read those first books. He must be thee most famous writer. This tale of a boy escaping two bad ladies into a world of make believe via a giant peach is full of fun and thrilling moments. His writing so well done, the vocabulary at times is more than a child could understand. I had fun reading this as I never read this story before unlike the rest of his stories. I have seen the cartoon of this. Reading it was so much better due to the precious time I shared with my son in experiencing its narrative. This was a big achievement for me to actually complete a novel(novella) with the boy instead of mostly a collection of short stories and picture books. I do hope one day he can really take up reading with an even more passion unaided, and compete with me in the amount of time spent reading.
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If there was one single reason to read this it would be that H.G Wells was a favoured author and an inspiration to the Legendary writer Ray Bradbury. If there was one single reason to read this it would be that H.G Wells was a favoured author and an inspiration to the Legendary writer Ray Bradbury. Pictured below in a time machine movie prop.
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2333 December 19th Alas this is a fine work from a writer of bygone times and if he could only discover his vision and writings of Time Travel were in fact prophecies and became true. As I have indeed traveled to 802,701AD and meet the lovely Weena a female Eloi and the dreadful Morlocks. The Time Machine he speaks of was made in the year 2222 but something even greater is in my possession much smaller and highly efficient the 'iFuture' watch is now the tool of Time travel it will revolutionize the whole time travel experience I have just finished the prototype and tested it. Infact I only wish Wells could tell of the year of 2666 the year of the undead, Zombies tread upon the earth society in mayhem and only few survivors to walk upon the land. I had indeed a purpose there and brought in time with me the virus to end the undead pandemic. Time Travel is indeed mans greatest invention and in the wrong hands mans worst nightmare and in the right hands a shining light of glory from darkness. This story is a grand work written in wonderful prose that has a deep thought provoking effectiveness on the reader. The vision of the future is indeed frightening especially his account of the end of life on earth. H G Wells is a writer of high intelligence, a grand thinker.
Time Travel is an entertaining genre to write about, the success of the 11.22.63 by Stephen King and movies like Back to the Future, The Time Machine and Planet of The Apes prove that.
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The story opens with a grand paragraph of affairs..
"PEOPLE DO not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off into t
The story opens with a grand paragraph of affairs..
"PEOPLE DO not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off into the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California good pieces that he carried in his trouser band."
True Grit a story that will stand the test of time not due to wonderful prose or sentences but due to the characters and the actual storytelling. This story is successful due to its creation of one big-hearted spunky young woman who is bent on reaping vengeance upon the guilt individual who had taken her cherished father from this earth. She hires a man she hopes has some true grit in aiding her bringing the murderer to justice. Eventually she finds herself part of a trio that's going to have its communication problems, flaws and a series of sabotages that try to stop her in her tracks. This girl won't give up it, giving up has no place in her psyche.
She's a memorable, witty, gusty girl, who is one step ahead of other that try to outsmart her, those that don't give her credit due to her physical appearance and her age. If you ever have a to leave behind a young girl, a legacy, she would be the one that many fathers would be proud to leave behind on this earth to face its darkest hours.
She the young soul 'Mattie' is a strong potent voice thee driving force of the narrative of this story. A girl's best friend is her horse in this story a beauty back beauty of a steed, these two gallant and great hearts face adversity with plenty of spunk. Memorable characters in the literary field and a splendid character on the big screen with the excellent adaptation on film.
A true classic work of pure storytelling in an uncomplicated form with staggering violence and beauty. She is one to add to the hall of fame of heroines of mine from literature.
"The Irishman said,"And is that the man?" He held a candle in his face. The body was wrapped in a white shroud. I said, "That is my father." I stood there looking at him. What a waste! Tom Chaney would pay for this! I would not rest easy until that Louisiana cur was roasting and screaming in hell!" "I hated these ponies for the part they played in my fathers death but now I realized the notion was fanciful, that it was wrong to charge blame to these pretty breasts who knew neither good nor evil but only innocence. I say that of these ponies. I have known some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sky faces?"
"Well, they were a sight to see with all their arms. They were both wearing their belt guns around their outside coats and LaBoeuf cut a splendid figure with his white-handled pistols and Mexican spurs. Rooster was wearing a deerskin jacket over his black suit coat. He carried only one revolver on his belt, an ordinary looking piece with grips of cedar or some reddish wood. On the other side, the right side, he wore a dirk knife. His gun belt was not fancy like LaBoeuf's but only a plain and narrow belt with no cartridge loops. He carried his cartridges in a sack in his pocket. But he also had two more revolvers in saddle scabbards at his thighs. They were big pistols like mine. The two officers also packed saddle guns, Rooster a Winchester repeating rifle and LaBoeuf a gun called a Sharps rifle, a kind I had never seen. My thought was this: Chaney, look out!"
"People love to talk. They love to slander you if you have any substance. They say I love nothing but money and the Presbyterian Church and that is why I never get married. They think everybody is dying to get married. It is true that I love my church and my bank. What is wrong with that?..........A woman with brains and a frank tongue and one sleeve pinned up and an invalid mother to care for is at some disadvantage...."