Book Review: Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

Publisher: New Amer Library Classics (2009)

Genre: Realistic fiction

Buy from Amazon

Sinopsis: A great American novel about a young girl who leaves her small hometown in the Midwest to Chicago where she climbs her way up, successfully realizing the American Dream at the cost of sacrificing her humanity.

To begin with, Theodore Dreiser is one of my most favourite authors. He writes in the genre of realistic fiction, which at first glance is as simplistic as it gets. On the contrary, however, it requires vast imagination, incredible talent and big scrupulosity for details. In addition to all that, Dreiser has an ability to emphatize with the main characters yet remaining objective and impartial at the same time, letting us, readers, be the judge. Which, reading Sister Carrie, can be quite difficult as this story is a true double-edged weapon. You can condemn Carrie's actions, labeling them as "immoral". And yet, giving it another thought, taking a closer look at her situation, you wonder whether you too wouldn't choose her choices... 

When reading Sister Carrie, the thing that always amazed me was Dreiser's skill to describe boring little details of the everyday life. Routine, littleness, dullness is suddenly interesting. And thinking together with the main character about how to survive on four and a half dollars per week, how to settle accounts with the baker whom you've been owing money for months, how to pay for rent, where to buy food cheap and how to still look presentable when you are completely drowning into poverty, is everything BUT boring. So I'm sure that, even if you won't like the story itself, you will definitely enjoy the novel's flow and Dreiser's writing style.

The story, however, is very enjoyable, too and, most importantly, requires some soul-searching. It opens with Carrie - a typical material girl. She wants to have lots of shoes and dresses, and she doesn't want to break her back working in a sweatshop to get that. Fortunatelly, almost as soon as she comes to Chicago, she meets Charlie Drouet, the salesperson, who liberates Carrie from financial difficulites and makes her his lover. This "deal" makes Carrie feel guilty and uncomfortable... at first. But when Drouet surrounds her with commodities and she gets a taste of nice clothing, she forgets about her shame and asks more and more from Drouet. And when her lover is suddenly not able to satisfy her appetite, Carrie dumps him for another - Hurstwood, a family man. For Carrie, Hurstwood ruines his marriage, ruins his career, ruins his life and is finally left as a broken man. Meanwhile, Carrie becomes a successful self-made woman, who has everything she ever dreamt of: money, clothing, admirers, public acclaim, her own house...  Dreiser ends the novel with a final paragraph that characterizes her "success":

"Oh Carrie, Carrie! <...> Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In you rocking-chair, by your window dreadming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel."

So are they really worth it, those materialist dreams? This is one of the numerous never-ending questions that Dreiser raises in his novel. 

Is Carrie really a horrible person for using men and living at their expense? What about those men, though - aren't they horrible too for using a young woman's youth for their own pleasure and comfort? Considering that all Carrie's lovers were always older than her and had more life experience, one can argue who really takes advantage of whom.

Is it really wrong to leave your man for another one? Do you really have to stay with a man merely out of gratitude for everything he's done to you, even when the romance is dead and you've become strangers to each other?

Is it really wrong to leave a man, who sacrificed his life for you, but who has then spiritually degraded, stopped taking care of himself, doesn't wish to look for a job and is ready to live at a woman's expense? Coming from work home to a pathetic, peevish man dissapointed in life just because you feel sorry for him? Would you choose that?

Carrie answered "no" to all of these questions, and, as reprehensible as one may find her actions, let's ask ourselves whether we could always remain noble and heroic when life is breaking us down. This is already a different story that begins as soon as the novel ends. 

Book Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

First edition, July 1890

Oscar Wilde's only novel has by now become a very mainstream book. People on the Internet have quoted it so mercilessly, that there's hardly anything left from it at this point. Most know what the story is about; nearly all have seen the relatively recent film adaptaion starring Ben Barns (it's horrible, by the way); an everyone, I'm sure of it, once toiled at "art for art's sake"-essay for an English class at school. Portrait of Dorian Gray is one of those must reads that really is one. And it's not for all the topics that Wilde raises in this work and that excite our soul, open our eyes and give us so much food for thought. It's for the language that Dorian Gray is written in - utter, an indisputable masterpiece.

Only when reading this novel, I indeed felt grateful for knowing English. Chained to pages, I read slowly, languidly, imagining characters' voices in my head, putting the book aside once in a while in order to ponder over the wisdoms and theories of Lord Henry - a "collector" of beaufy and innocence that he perceives as merely a glass of wine needed to be drunk. I was, on the other hand, taking little sips, leisurely enjoying the story that was so entailing and so horrifying at the same time. Watching somebody slowly die is a hypnotizing thing indeed, especially if it happens as horridly beautiful as in the case of Dorian. After all, who's to say that his life wasn't beautiful? He surrounded it with art, and he embodied it. His life was a destructive whirlwind of pleasures but, as masterfully shown by Wilde, satisfying them causes more hunger than satiation. Greed for beauty and greed for aesthetic satisfaction does not praise but, rather, belittles the man. And there's no better way to illustrate this than in Wilde's perfect, magical language which by itself is real art. It's so witty, isn't it? I mean, to say "All art is quite useless" but in the most artistic way possible.

Book Review: The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris

What it is about:

The 4-Hour Work Week is a 3 in 1 book: a non-fiction, a self-help, and a how-to. Amazon describes it as a 'step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design'. Forget working from 9 to 5 and life in an office cubicle, and transform your life into becoming a New Rich who is able to own a business without running it, costantly take 6-month vacations from work, and travel all around the world without spending much money.

What I think about it:
I heard about this book years ago while I was still living in Latvia. It was hard not to notice the books since even in the post-soviet side of the world everybody went nuts about it. In a good way? Not really. If in the U.S. Timothy Gerris managed to become a NYT betselling author and keep this title for 4 years, on the other side of the Atlantic he was constantly accused of being a bragged and a douchebag who detests middle class and those unable to escape from its clucthes. The reason for such difference in opinions doesn't require to dig too deep: Ferris simply aimed for too large of a target, without realizing that socio-economical models are different (sometimes like day and night) depending on every region. Think about it.

Start-up model that works in the U.S. will under no circumstances work in Ukraine or Belarus. You can never make a business selling yoga for climbers DVDs in Russia, because in Russia the pirate version of it will appear on the web within the first few hours. You will never be able to become a New Rich somewhere in South America by re-selling sailor T-shirts from France at $100 each, because people are generally way poorer and can't form a decent market. It's the U.S. where people are so spoilt with the luxury of choices - in way too many other countries the situation is completely different.

So a lot of people displeased with the book actually have a great point.

At the same time, I don't believe that Ferris really intented to write a universal guideline of how to succeed with little effort. What he, on the other hand, suggests is plenty of practical advice on time management, work efficiencty, priority-listing, automation, and, most important, on being more creative, on thinking outside the box, acquiring views on life that allow more perspectives and bigger possibilities. Stop being afraid to take more from life and reach out, is what I hear him saying. Tim Ferris is a greedy man - you can feel it from his constant self-advertising and bragging with his living-on-a-beach, travelling-with-ease life-style. But he is greedy for life, and this energetic enthusiasm is - at least for me - a contageous thing.

So I do recommend reading - but only between the lines.

PS. The book is loaded with quotations, real life stories, extracts from various articles, useful web links, etc. The latter can be found on Timothy Ferris' blog that is saturated with useful info of very different kind: http://fourhourworkweek.com/4-hour-workweek-tools/

Book Review: Thanks For The Memories by Cecelia Ahern

Finally being done with my thesis, I was very excited to be having free time again to read all those classic novels on my Kindle that I never had time to read before. But it appeared that writing the paper drained my brain out completely and utterly. So Thanks For The Memories by Cecelia Ahern turned up just in time.

This books is nothing special. I read it in a Russian edition in an embarrassing romantic cover with two kissing sweethearts. I didn't care. What I cared about was the plot that allowed me to follow the story and not to take part in it, to live with the characters and not to feel for them - not to suffer for them, not to empathize with them, not even to think about them too much. The story is exciting and challenging just enough not to be considered difficult or boring. And sometimes every reader needs to just scratch on the surface, enjoy an easy, even plain, style of writing, and take some delight in silly fairy-tale sweetnesses.

I think there are times when our brain is so exhausted that it is in no position to be reading good literature. By good literature I mean that that keeps the reader in suspense, causes pain and joy, harrows the soul, and touches upon the very dearest and innermost thoughts and feelings. So when the reader is dead tired, such books as those by Ms. Ahern, usually considered second-rate, help to restore the needed balance in order to get back at something more serious later on.

Book Review: Write Good or Die, edited by Scott Nicholson

Write Good or Die is a collection of tips on writing and publishing given by several contemporary best-selling authors, such as J. A. Konrath, Gayle Lunds, Alexandra Sokoloff, Jonathan Maberry, and many more. I have hitherto heard of none of them. Nevertheless, I find that these established authors give extremely helpful advice and very clear instructions on how to write and get published. And also share their valuable experiences and affirmative stories that are very much fun to read if you are a mere reader and inspire to keep going if you are an aspiring writer.

Here I collected some tips and clues on writing that I found to be most helpful:

1. Get disciplined.
This means that you have to make the time for writing even if you seemingly don't have any. As Kevin J. Anderson shares, 'I worked a full-time regular job while I wrote my first novels, scraping out an hour or three in the evening and weekends. That's how I've become a successful author.' Only discipline gets the job done.

2. Practice your craft.
Have you read 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell? In this rather controversial book he stated something that we all kinda knew before - that for your genius to blossom in its full power we only need to - wait for it... - practice, practice, practice. 10 thousand hours minimum, he said. So start today because according to my calculations, two hours of practicing per day (that's the reasonable estimate which is still quite high for me) will make it approximately 13 years for you to shine. But after all, a profesisonal is an amateur who didn't quit. So be persistent!

Writing is a skill. The ability to use the right words to properly indicate what's in your head is something you have to practice. (c) Mur Lafferty

3. Take the pressure off. 
'It's okay to suck', assures Mur Lafferty. And I love this approach! I feel that sometimes there is this huge fear of being not merely 'not good enough' but to be 'embrarrassingly bad'. And it's hard to write anything under such a pressure. So accepting beforehand that I will be writing a lot of crap literally takes the weight of the world off my shoulders.

Let go of the illusion of perfection. What you are writing might suck. The closer you are to your first day writing, the more likely you are to suck. (c) Mur Lafferty

4. Love what you write and write what you love.
You must write what you are excited about, as the excitement is infectious. Your book will be successful if that's a book that you would want to read yourself. So write the novel you love.

Every writer should write what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, or what they love. From the passion comes true art. (c) Dean Wesley Smith

5. Get feedback.
Make your family, friends, friends of your friends, your blog's subscribers, strangers read your novel and give you an outside opinion on it. Once you got your feedback, then start polishing: editing, correcting, re-correcting, rewriting. But don't do this during the very creative process of writing as it may block your flow. Also, seek for criticism, not praise. And read what's currently selling.

Listen to advice, and throw out advice. (c) Heather Graham

6. Don't take rejection personally.
Just like you accepted the fact that it's okay to suck, accept the fact that people say 'no' more often than they say 'yes'. Don't give way to despair, though, and keep rememering J. K. Rowling, who faced 12 rejections before somebody agreed to publish her first book.

Sometimes I would whisper "yes" out loud to myself just to make sure the word still exister. (c) M. J. Rose 

There is tons of other practical advice, helpful tips on writing techniques, valuable insight opinions on how publishing business works. So I surely recommend the book to anyone who intends to get serious about their writing.

Book Review: The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho

When it comes to The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho, people usually split into two groups: the ones who love the book and the ones who hate it. The 'haters' often look down at the 'admirers', saying that the latter ones simply lack literary taste. I realize it is mean, and unfair, and may sound square, but I have to agree with that: people who find Alchemist a good book have either no taste or simple are not well-read. Both are quite bad excuses.

The book, which is about 70 pages long in Word (for some reason (I think it's a marketing technique), some published editions manage to stretch this scribble up to whole 250 pages), can be read in several hours. The protagonist, an Andalusian named Santiago, sees a dream about the treasure hidden at Egyptian pyramids, and decided to follow the dream, like a true believer. On his way, Santiago meets an old man Melchizedel who becomes his mentor and who gives him two stones, Urim and Thummim, that are supposed to show 'answers' and give 'signs' at the crossroads of choices and difficult desicions. Santiago also meets a mysterious Alchemist who teaches him how to accept oneself and, together with that, the soul of the whole world. Successfully overcomming all ordeals that Santiago faced during his quest (i.e., doing everything that 'fate' prepared for him), he finally finds the treasure (and love, and self-acceptance).

I honestly do not understand the ecstatic rapture around this book. It is just so bad on so many levels. Let me touch upon several of them:

The Alchemist is a pure pop-culture product on the shallow level of Britney Spears' creations. Pop-culture is not innovative. It is simply a mash-up of everything that was once on the tide of public enthusiasm. Why do you think people like Lady Gaga? Her music is so catchy because it has something from Madonna's biggest hits, something from Elton John, something from Mercury, and son on.

The Alchemist is based on absolutely the same concept: borrowing. There is nothing new idea-wise, and everything that is borrowed is done in the tackiest way. I choose to say 'tacky' because writing another Book of Proverbs and making it sound as something 'original is exactly that. The Alchemist is a big colletcion of quotes, famous expressions, aphorisms and words of wisdom taken mailny from the Bible. But of course, one has to have read the Bible or at least be very knowledgeable about it to have the ability to recognize these little details, that, in this case, are not even archetypes, but a blatant copy.

Regarding the very literary value, the book has none. Bad style, bad writing, words are intert, the plot is bleak, the characters are extremely flat, and, most importantly, the author has absolutely no voice. And isn't the voice of an author, his perspective, his view, his angle, his opnions the main thing that is keeping the drive? Isn't that one of the very functions of literature - to convey one's true opinions and beliefs, to let yourself be heard and spread your own word? Unfortunately, Paolo Coelho does not 'own' anything. And his famous Alchemist is nothing but a sorry compilation.

PS. I wish people read more classics.

Book Review: Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome

My first acquaintance with the works of Jerome Klapka Jerome (I always loved the 'Klapka' part, it just sounds so ridiculous) happened in my early teens, with his famous Three Men in a Boat. Later on, I watched the soviet film adaptation of the book (1979, starring super-talented Andrej Mironov), which became one of my most favourite soviet movies. Because let's face it: Three Men in a Boat is the wittiest, funniest, silliest, most hilarious thing ever written about the idlest, laziest young imbeciles (and the world has those in abundance) who struggle to find a cause to employ their torrential energy at.

Three Men was written in 1889. Three years earlier, however, Jerome Jerome prepared the ground for the novel with his collection of essays Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, which is, as believed by many, a continuation of Lazy Thought of a Lazy Girl published anonymously be Jerome, who hid behind a female pseudonym of Jenny Wren.

Jerome Jerome dedicated this collection of observations to his most faithful friend and dearest companion in idleness: his pipe. Smoking it slowly and leisurely, this was, I believe, how he created his essays in which he raised a question of what it really means to be an idle fellow. 'A genuine idler is a rarity', Jerome points out, 'He is not a man who slouches about with his hands in his pockets. On the contrary, his most startling characteristic is that he is always intensely busy.' But, what does it really mean to be an idle fellow after all? Well, from what I learned out of JKJ's essays, being an idle fellow is almost the same as having ADHD. You try to focus on one thing, but eventually get carried away with the sudden torrent of other ideas with their powerful waves that are impossible to withstand. Jerome Jerome, a skillful idler himself, admitted that at times he felt like his own mind was giving way under this mental downpour. The only way to win the battle, however, is to surrender. Surrender, let your thoughts flutter like butterflies, and you will be rewarded with an ability to make some of the deepest observations on life that in normal, i.e. oppressed, state of being simply cannot be fit into your busy time-schedule. You learn a lot about the world once you let your mind dwell freely upon random things. You learn, for instance, that cats are smarter than dogs. Or that everybody is vain -- especially your pious auntie, and especially cats. You learn that people are better creatures when they are fed, and that melancholy, in small doses, is the most pleasurable thing on earth.

This is not shallow. This is life.

At first glance (and at second, too), Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, albeit full of Jerome's cleverest remarks on human nature, lacks common structure: there are no resolutions to the initially proposed issues of discussion; there is too much chaos and too much deviation. But it is exactly these deviations that make the essays such a pleasurable, and edifying, read.

Book Review: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I was never a fan of contemporary literature. Not because I didn't like it, but simply because I just never read it. I thought: it can never be as good as classics, which was a view imposed by my literature teacher at school, a harry-potter-hater. And so I never really tried how it tastes.

Well, The Secret Life of Bees tastes like honey. It is a sweet, viscous consistency of words that had a liberating, soothing effect on me. Sue Monk Kidd writes in a gorgeous language, using simple words that have a great power.

At first glance, the plot of the story looks a bit unoriginal: another coming-of-age story, another Bildungsroman. The main motifs are plain and unpretentious, and the end is quite predictable - a girl sets off on a quest to find truth about her long-dead mother, and she does, and eventually she even discovers for herself something more significant than that. On her way to finding the 'truth', Lily (that's her name), a tragic optimist and a naive believer, goes through things that may be even eye-rolling for some of the readers: first life-turning menstruation, first can-never-be-together love, dealing with an abusing father who lost his ability to love and withdrew into himself, and another set of cliches. Plus, the background motif of black people fighting for their rights is also quite hackneyed.

But. All these cliche stories touching upon the commonly known questions that have been on the table for no less than eternity already are so moving that it is simply impossible not to fall under their charm. And 'simply' is a determining word when it somes to this novel.

I like the simple idea conveyed in the book (which I define as a 'quest for independence') that in order to fully mature, it is necessary to find confidence and drive within, and stop seeking and craving for other people's acceptance. Accept yourself first. Love yourself first, forgive yourself first, cherish yourself first, and then the whole world will repeat after you, like a reflection in the mirror. This is what the real faith is. And Lily learns that this real faith is not hidden behind some certain symbols; instead, these symbols of faith can be anything else - a black Madonna, a bee-hive, a stone wall. Or Rosaleen's pancakes.

I also like how symbolically Sue Monk Kidd drew a parallel between the life of bees and life of humans. In the ancient times, the bees were considered to be a symbol of life, death and rebirth which is everything Lily underwent once she ran away from home and started a new life in the honeyland.

I love the simplicity of The Secret Life of Bees. It is exactly what makes the book so complex and so interesting - Sue Monk Kidd took everything we all already knew and mashed it up together in a unique combination that proposed a new, fresh, and a strong perspective on some everlasting things. And ultimately changed my views on the value of contemporary literature.

PS. Did you know that honey can be purple?