New Literary Fiction Book Club
| 29 March 2011
Well, I have started a new book group and had one meeting. The first book was "Under the Sheltering Sky" by Paul Bowles, what a depressing book. The stated purpose of this group is to dissect "good" books and find out what makes them tick. Well, this one was about a couple who start out in bad trouble psychologically and end up dead (the man) and gone (the woman). I tend to read books that have something to learn from or is at least pleasant. This one had none of that. I did learn some of the techniques the author used to write and I must admit he could put words together, but I like the story to end up redeemable, too. This reminded me of stories about the 'rich' and their empty lives commenting and judging the whole word all the while admitting their lives are crap. I did disagree with one of the other people in the group that at the end the woman did 'choose' to drop out instead of just fading away. That, at least to me, was positive and actually fit the overall philosophy that the civilized world was something to avoid. Perhaps I am wrong in this judgment in that the book did take the characters and completely strip them of any thinking and so a positive move is not really in line with that.
Now we are on to another, Cloud Atlas and again we have miserable people. At least this jumps around in a rather clever way. The first section is about a man on a sailing ship in the 1800's or perhaps father back in time. While the description was interesting, the racial stuff was appalling. Somehow "that's the way it was back then" just doesn't make it palatable. I realize the reason I like Sci-Fi is that the characters are not objects and each is explored as beings worthy of notice regardless of their skin tone. Anyway, the journal abruptly ends and another story starts-a student of music (who has been kicked out of not only his family but his school, too) who goes to work for a composer to help that composer get his work written down and organized. That was good until that young man started stealing books from the composer. We find out the journal was one of the composer's books and the young man wants to find out more about it. The next section is of the man the young man is writing to that tells us about the adventure in the composer's house. My heart cries when they each turn out to be low lifes (ironic how they turn up their noses at the poor who are often much more virtuous than these guys could ever be.
I just hope I can learn from these. I would have preferred to read classics that I have missed, instead of this modern (?) stuff. I hope I am not too pretentious about all this. I will give this at least one more meeting.
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