- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1360
Somehow I picked it up and began rereading it. I had read it once, long ago, some 20 years past when I read everything by Orwell, or almost everything, and so I picked up believing that I would just skim it, refresh my memory, revisit the central themes and characters.
It wasn't as I remembered it. I remembered it, true, most of it, but the details, the nuances, raw brutality, the intimacies of violence were all forgotten.
Possibly I read it during high school, some dumbed-down bowlderized version, which would account for it.
It's a great book. Prescient, insightful, and bleak as all out.
He got it wrong in the details, of course, or some of the details. That the population would by and large be poor and live in squalor, subjegated by a lack of education, a failure to percieve options, wrong, they would be instead fattened like pigs on soda pop and fast food, they would be dumbed by the news and doublespeak, true, but there is no once telescreen channel with a monopoly rather there are thousands of channels, each with its own view, the dumbing down would come about as a result of the constant assault of conflicting or complimentary points of view. But we have undoubtedly been dumbed down, not from lack of choice (there are abundant choices), but from laziness on our own part, our readiness to accept the situation, any situation, without revolt so long as we are kept plump and lightly distracted....
The telescreens nowadays don't watch us, they don't have to. We have the internet, credit cards, banks, traffic and street cameras, we bare all willingly before the corporations, our validition a function of our credit rating and institutional approval. Some bare more intimate, personal details, but these are not (yet) what the corporations want, they are the perverse misunderstandings who have taken this absence of privacy to the next level.....
The news has become entertainment. AN inane parody without self recognition of all things that might somehow be important. 15 or 30 minute breaks amuse us and feed the smug feelings that we are well informed.
The tortures he describes, that are visited upon Winston, the insistence upon conformity, they are still happening, slowly in the works, there are none (here, in Canada) so dire as he describes (and how accurately he portrays it!), rather people are hung in the vacuum of shopping malls and lifestyles, a torture of the spirit as opposed to the flesh. Far less painful, but no less damaging.
It's a great book. Revisit it if you have the chance...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1306
In which a New York Times book reviewer retraces via automobile, train and planes the route taken by the 7th century Buddhist Monk Hsuan Tsang through China and India in his journey to achieve enlightenment. If that sound's ambiguous it was meant to be so, the retracing of the journey of the monk is meant to juxtapose the experiences of a traveller today with those of the monk some 1300 years ago. And the narrator generously (too generously) shares with us his own spiritual angst as that of a middle aged Jewish man who is unable to commit to wife or religion, the monks quest becoming, in a way, his own.
In theory this should have been a great travel book. I mean, shucks, "The New York Times Book Review" has a blurb on the cover that reads: "Wonderful...Deserves to become a classic in its own right" . Which, when you think about it, makes sense as Richard Bernstein works for "The New York Times Book Review". Reviewing books. Hopefully they didn't assign him this to read. Or, quite possibly, they did. Which would explain the review.
That said, it was OK, but with so many good and great books out there I wouldn't take the time out to read it. Somehow the narrator failed to engage me, the people, places, situations, were not my own. But it did inspire me to research some other travel authors who might interest me more....
Review: (In keeping with the Buddhist theme): "The sound of 1 hand clapping"
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1230
I didn't want to read this book. I picked it up thinking that my mother, who taught in Japan for several years, might enjoy it. But she'd read it and recommended it to me heartily.
Now I wasn't in any great rush to read it for a couple of other reasons. One of which was that I thought I had attended university with Will and that he was an asshole. Well, not necessarily an asshole, he was quite likeable in fact, it's just that he published before me and while it's probably drivel possibly it's not and that makes him an asshole.
So I did a bit of research and, lo and behold, I didn't go to university with Will Ferguson. A few "Will's", a few "Ferguson's", that was probably where I got confused. It doesn't lessen the fact that he's still an asshole.
I began the book, perfectly prepared to hate the guy and write it off. Looking, in fact, for any reason to dislike it. But, oddly enough, there weren't any. Or not too many. It's actually a perfect travel book. By perfect I mean he meets a variety of characters, there's some humour and poetry, he has some small adventures and fills us in with the history, geography and culture of the places he visits. And his assessments aren't far off of my own (if anything they're probably better, having done research and all). But I won't hold that against him.
It was a good book. Actually, it was a great book, but I wouldn't say that 'cause I hate the guy. I'd give it a full bento box, with extra salmon and octupus and several extra pieces of that delicious fried tofu.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1204
by Umberto Eco
I like Umberto Eco. And I liked this. Good book.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1319
Edited and Introduced by Mark Roskill
Now this is a great book. Here, in 1 volume, are the collected letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo.
That said, it's not perfect. It's a 1963 paperback with black and white plates of his work. Van Gogh is sold short in full color prints, there's no point to black and white prints at all. But it's an old book, so you can't really expect better. It's been edited, which is a bad thing, and there are notes to certain letters advising that certain of Vincent's observations to Theo are left out as being irrelevant. While I appreciate this is probably true, I'd prefer to judge that for myself. There are notes as well that reference other letters Van Gogh wrote to Gauguin on the back of his letters to Theo, but not reproduced. This is a bit of a tease. There are notes as to sketches that Van Gogh sent to Theo along with his letters, or drawings on the page, but these again are not reproduced. And it would be good to see Theo's responses to Van Gogh's letters, to form perhaps a better idea of their correspondence.
So in short, there's no criticizing Van Gogh, but the editing could be better done. Things I'd look for were I to buy this again:
- More notes as to the paintings and what became of them (He describes quite vividly what he's working on in the letters, but only some of them are footnoted. Many of his works went missing as well, and it would be curious to know what's survived and what's missing, as well as where the surviving works are currently.)
- Something that attempted to reproduce the drawings that accompanied his letters
- Letter from Theo, as well as surviving letters from Vincent to Gauguin, etc.