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More of My Poetry

A Summary of Recently Enjoyed Books.
The Catcher in the Rye By J.D. Salinger For the low, low price of seven thousand, five hundred dollars (American), you can own the first edition copy of Catcher in the Rye seen in the picture. Just click the link. Anyhow, I have just finished reading what is essentially Holden Caulfield's diary for about the fifth time. Maybe it is the eternal child in me that makes me want to keep going back to this book, I don't know, but every time I do I am glad I did. I feel that I have a lot in common with Holden Caulfield. He finds just about everybody phony and doesn't really like people very much, except for children for whom he seems to have the utmost respect. Holden's love for children first shows itself in his description of his young sister, Phoebe. All of his thoughts up to those of his sister are dark and unsettling. Phoebe's description is so outrightly loving that the reader is shown an entirely new side to Holden, one that shows he is not entirely incapable of happiness. Phoebe's role as a minor character in the novel is to keep Holden anchored to reality; to prevent him from ruining his life completely and losing all hope in his future. It is because of his fear of what Phoebe would do without him that keeps Holden from moving out west. When she tries to accompany him, Holden implicitly realizes that the trip west would destroy Phoebe's innocence, and that his erratic behavior would prove harmful to her. He makes the decision to stay to comfort Phoebe and to keep her from falling over the cliff by the rye field before her time. One of the themes of this book is the recurring question of what happens to the ducks in Central Park. Holden wonders "where the ducks in the park go when the pond freezes over", which is basically his way of asking what a person does when their environment no longer supports them. It is this feeling that motivates him to want to leave the city and live like a hermit in the woods allowing nobody but Phoebe and his brother D.B. to visit him. This book definitely holds a place in my all time favourites along with a couple of others that Holden himself recommended: Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress By Dai Sijie In this debut novel by Dai Sijie we are taken China during Mao's Cultural Revolution of 1971. The revolution shut down universities and "reactionary intellectuals" were banished to the countryside for "re-education". The book centres on the lives of two teenage boys who are sent to live on the remote and unforgiving mountain known as Phoenix in the Sky. Even though the two boys consider limited knowledge, they are children of "bourgeois" parents and as such they are considered dangerous intellectuals. As a result, they are forced to spend their days carrying buckets of excrement up and down the mountain to fertilize the fields. They come to possess a suitcase full of banned, western novels in Chinese translation. These books open up a whole new world of sex, romance and all other things forbidden on the mountain. Sijie could have done so much more with this story than he did. It's almost as though he lost interest in his own idea halfway through. The book is a mere 184 pages and it's printed in a larger than average font. Frankly, I can't believe they were able to make a film out of this. The idea is good; the execution is sub-par.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay By Michael Chabon Joe Kavalier leaves Prague in a coffin he shares witht the Golem. When a book starts out like this, you just know it's going to be good. Eventually, Joe ends up in Brooklyn - in the home of his cousin Sammy. The two of them quickly become friends and come up with an idea for a comic called The Escapist. The theme of "escaping" runs throughout the book. Joe is often found trying to get out of situations both physical and metaphorical. Ultimately, this trait does not serve him well or fulfill him in any way. He finds that only through a reconnection to the living will he ease his restlessness. A grand work that does deal with epic adventures yet one that also succeeds at presenting vivid characters with believable motivations. I became very attached to the characters in this book, and if I had to find a negative about the story, it would be that the author too is quite attached to his characters. Nothing remotely catastrophic ever happens to them which is good on one hand, but slightly disappointing and unbelievable on the other. For example, Joe spends a part of his life alone in the Arctic looking for Germans to kill and manages to make it out without a scratch. The book contains several elements of an Epic, but at times is a little hard to swallow. That's all I'm saying. Overall, I loved the book. In fact, I would say it is one of the top five books I have ever read, and it is very deserving of the Pulitzer it was awarded.