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book reports, books, Karen Tashkovski

Book Report: Wuthering Heights

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You Tube is agog with every content creator jumping on the Wuthering Heights bandwagon, from movie goers/critics to literary scholars and nerds.

There is a new film adaptation of this classic tale by Emily Bronte where the title is in quotes, akin to porn or something, as referenced by the theatrical trailer.  Every movie version of this story focuses on what people see as a passionate love story between two people in a forbidden love who are forced into limerence by no fault of their own.

None of that makes sense to me after having completed my read through.

The literarians like to focus on the author’s backstory to find clues as to why she wrote this novel/where she got the idea, etc.  Emily Bronte and her sisters were spinsters in the 1800s.  All three of them wrote novels.  Their brother was a failed artist who lusted after a married woman then died of a broken heart; they also had two additional siblings who died in childhood along with their mother (and later they buried their father).  And Emily herself died of tuberculosis just three years after publishing her novel, which she wrote as a twenty-seven-year-old with no experience in the love department.

Emily Bronte

With that noted, there must have been contempt inside of her.  I have a friend who likes to watch those Real Housewives TV shows.  She enjoys the mayhem because she is not exposed to drama in her real loving family life and she finds those people hilarious.  I’m guessing that before the discovery of antibiotics,  there were a lot of people in the Bronte era dying young from colds and such, which made for the real life mantra life sucks then you die.  Here, I’m assuming that their household was not as wonderful as my friend’s is, and so they didn’t find the humor in it

It took me a week to get through Wuthering Heights because I kept needing to get some distance away from these miserable characters.  I felt miserable too – it was so weird.  I was feeling bothered by the littlest things in my own life that normally don’t get to me and I kept wondering why I was feeling this dark cloud over my head thing.  And then I was like – oh, yeah – it’s the book.  It’s a giant negative energy, but only in the way that pseudo-friend you have is, the one who talks badly/gossips about people and basically gives you their backstory from their own opinion of the truth.  And then it takes you days to clear your head of that shit.

So why did I stick with it?  Emily Bronte’s structure fascinates me.  A man rents a house in the moors, ingratiates himself with the owners and then, after snooping around on a bookshelf and finding a diary, he invades its privacy and secretly reads the words of a young Catherine Earnshaw.  He then mentions her name to Heathcliff, the landowner, and is intrigued by the man’s reaction.

Because this man, Lockwood, is obviously a busy-body with nothing better to do.  Apparently, he is on some sort of vacation from his life. He decides to engage the housekeeper in exchanging gossip about these people.

Thus begins this information dump complete with the woman’s recollections of dialogue, as well as her opinions about the characters inserted throughout.  Clearly, when someone is talking about other people, they see themselves as the hero/heroine, as Ellen/Nelly Dean tends to do here, so you don’t get the “truth” just her version of it.

Catherine and her brother grow up alongside their adopted brother Heathcliff.  Catherine and Heathcliff are equally naughty children.  The brothers don’t get along.  Their mother dies, followed by their father.  Catherine meets the neighbors, father, mother and a brother and sister.  The neighbors are wealthy.  They are blondes.  Catherine and her brother have brown hair, Heathcliff is described as of Indian or a Chinese-mix ethnicity with black hair and eyes.  The neighbors don’t like Heathcliff either.

So, his only friend is Catherine, and she’s actually a bitch.  She does tell Nelly that she feels like she and Heathcliff are the same person, meaning the same personality, which appears accurate, although Heathcliff, while eavesdropping, hears all the negative things she says and decides to leave.  They are both about fifteen years old at this time.  Apparently, in his absence, he gets educated and gets money somehow (undisclosed) and upon his return three years later, Catherine is married to the neighbor and is also pregnant.  Heathcliff – is he in love with her or does he just want to spend time with his sister?  You know?  It’s kind of weird.

Upon his return, she pendulum swings, saying mean things about both men, then nice things.  She doesn’t know what she wants, she has everything and yet is unhappy – Catherine obviously has a case of Borderline Personality Disorder.  She starves herself, gives birth and promptly dies.  Heathcliff goes into a deep mourning and is angry at the world and everyone in his vicinity.

He marries Catherine’s sister-in-law, they have a kid, he is mean to them.  Cut to the children growing up – Catherine’s daughter, her brother’s son and Heathcliff’s son.

At the end of the novel, only two are still alive, lol.  It’s a drop dead fest.  No real hero’s journey, except we get this dialogue from Heathcliff towards the end that gives you a sense that his contempt was all retaliation, and it is sad.  I actually cried.

In life, it is really important to not react to provocation.  That happiness is an inside job.  Unfortunately for the characters and for the author, I’m speculating, they did not get that memo.

If you still want to read this book after this report, know that the structure of this story is so original, that your interpretation will be different from mine because it is set up to include you as the voyeur to the proceedings, since it is coming from the POV of a spectator with her own opinions of her employers.  And this is what makes Wuthering Heights a classic.

Some people get a spiritual/ghostly thing-a-ma-bob here – it’s that Victorian Gothic mood they enjoyed to infuse, but I didn’t bite on that.  And, as many of you may have seen the Margot Robbie movie recently, you might read it searching for the romance and you might find it, the way the woman who wrote Fifty Shades of Grey turned Twilight  into a BDSM fantasy.

I’m waiting for a reinterpretation a la the people who wrote the Brooklyn 99 TV series, where the characters say the exact same dialogue that is in the book but it is in the tone of comedy zingers.  Now that would be a movie worth watching – maybe even a mini-series.  Can I manifest that?

P.S. – I borrowed my book from the public library.  It was the large print version.  You can buy one here.

 

book reports, books

Book Report: The Secret of Secrets

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I am a Dan Brown novel nerd.  I collect the illustrated copies of his novels and have them on display on a table in my living room.  Not all of his books have gotten the illustrated treatment (and I have read them all), but I have no doubt that The Secret of Secrets will eventually get it due to Brown’s dedication to placing his protagonist, Robert Langdon, in the Czech Republic (is that what they call Czechoslovakia these days?).  And that is a new location for him to be.  All of the places described in the story are real locations.

I’ve never been to Prague so the visuals in that future illustrated incarnation of the novel will be a welcome addition.

I borrowed my copy from the public library – and allow me to give a shout out of gratitude to the East Syracuse Free Library for having a “large print” copy of said text.  Easy peasy, that, to read in daylight, lamp light and near Christmas tree lights.  It took me a week to read the almost nine hundred page thing but only because I read in short bursts due to juggling a bunch of other activities in my life, including road trips and immersing myself in a six dozen strong new series of encaustic paintings.

The entire story of The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown takes place in the course of a day, mainly, with a bit of exposition regarding the night before and a relatively quick two-day wrap up.

I think I was reading it like an editor.  There were some things that bugged me, like early on when Katherine makes a joke about George Clooney, who was already married two years before Brown started writing the story.  Another thing – the pacing:  later, a lot of dialogue takes place before a catastrophic event that is supposed to happen within fifteen minutes and it took me more than fifteen to read what they are saying to each other, that sort of thing.  Do I not read fast enough or did time slow down?  In that particular case, the guy holding the gun is giving information to people he plans to kill – such a James Bond/Dr. Who/villainesque diatribe.  And of course, the worst offense, the bit where Robert Langdon is in love with a woman he doesn’t know well.  They call each other Robert and Katherine – not Rob or Bobby, not Kathy or Katie?  They are actually having their first hotel tryst and there is no sex.  No sexy either – no romantic banter that would be considered private joke shorthand, you know?  I’m guessing that Dan Brown’s fans are mostly a geriatric crowd but we are all still vibrant, attractive people who fuck.

Additionally, these two people don’t think alike.  She believes in consciousness as it moves around the universe like energy and connects us to one another, with the additional fiction that it can be monitored and accessed  into a conventional science.  He – not so much, but he admires her ideas.  Oh, and then there are a couple jabs that she is an older woman (by four years) after she teases his fitness level, and later, his fashion choices.  She also teases his history lesson offerings.  I don’t know – it is…awkward.

Lastly, and this is the biggest, the whole thing is about the greatest secret to being successful in life, and that is to be fearless about death – spoilers – that what happens after death is the big secret.  And yet, there is no mention of emotion guiding one’s gut.  No stay positive message, which to me is always the correct path and takeaway.  Unfortunately, provoking fears is the whole secret to writing a good thriller.

So those were my criticisms.

I do applaud Brown for taking his beloved character, aging him (Langdon is in his fifties now), and creating another adventure that is different than the plots of the other books.  Yes, there is a creepy shadowy character like there was in The DaVinci Code, but there is an unexpected climax to that.  A lot of the story is told in exposition via several different perspectives and we get only enough to move the story forward.

Now, if these voices told us everything at once, meaning, like, if we were privy to everything in their mind during their tenure as point of view character, there would have been no story.   Why didn’t you just tell me that when you had the chance? – sort of thing.

The book would have still worked if Robert and Katherine had spent the day sightseeing instead of becoming embroiled in a quest for information, IMO.  That would have been a great twist to Brown’s writing.

Overall, I enjoyed the read.  There is a thrill at the end when you put a giant book down akin to having successfully climbed a mountain.  And there is also a satisfaction in coming away from an immersion in another, shall I say alternate universe?  In Brown’s novel, it is referred to as non-local consciousness and being able to harness it into a virtual reality in some way.  Perhaps one could lose oneself so unwittingly, that one becomes someone else by changing one’s neural plasticity.  I think I’m saying that right.  And by one I mean me.

Every piece of The Secret of Secrets’ puzzle left me wanting to get to the conclusion – I’ll give Brown that.  He’s good at that.

I was held hostage reading about an exhausting twelve hour rollercoaster ride of dangerous maneuvers where characters didn’t have time to go to the bathroom or change their wet shoes.  I kept thinking, Langdon is supposed to be a rational thinker who stumbles into New Age ideologies.  Instead, he adopts irrationally provoked decisions, which almost get him killed.

None of that seems fun in real life.  I thought he and Katherine were finally going to have sex but then he falls asleep.  Then, a couple hours later he is awakened by a phone call – there is more to the story that needs to be wrapped up and the couple must reenter the drama – no quickies, no kissing, nothing.

Brown does a good job sticking to his outline in order to drive the book to a tidy conclusion.  None of these characters are good vs. evil, and there are a lot of characters, all just people doing their jobs or rather, making loose cannon decisions masked as duties.

Robert Langdon is the only fish out of water here.  He’s only there to be Katherine Solomon’s sexless plus one, lol, and he ends up using his symbolic expertise and historical factoids to save the day.  What a nerd.

 

book reports, books, Karen Tashkovski

Book Report: Sunrise on the Reaping

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Recently, I found out that my gut feeling about a friendship was spot on.  Several years ago I was betrayed by someone regarding a relationship I had with a man I cared for deeply.  I cringe just thinking about all the times I poured my heart out to this woman and I feel like such an idiot.

No matter how all flowers and butterflies we try to spin our world, we really need to listen to our respective guts.  And I take full responsibility for my role/naiveté in this disastrous chapter of my life.  It is not anyone’s fault.  I did this to myself, although maybe she was inadvertently doing me a favor.  Men don’t belong on pedestals.

Now, law of attraction-wise, religion-wise and otherwise, we all know that what you believe becomes your truth.  I ignored how  other people judged her because I was practicing and still try to  promote positive energy values, the kind that eventually lead to desires materializing.

It’s funny how new information erupts those memories.  In hindsight, you see it all clearly, how your actions contributed to the reality.  Why did I overshare?  My consequence was humiliation, embarrassment, isolation…the kind of stuff that heals with a new relationship and better friend choices.  Nobody died.

Reading Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins was a wonderful way for me to escape the ruminating and relate to someone else’s decision making catastrophes based on their grim circumstances.   We know Haymitch’s story.  He is portrayed by Woody Harrelson in the Katniss Everdeen Hunger Games trio of movies.  We know he wins the games as a teen and we know he becomes a drunk to escape the horrors of this dystopian premise where children from the Districts are sent to fight to the death for the pleasure of a viewing audience and to commemorate a horrendous civil war.  This is supposedly the future of the United States of America.

The children (ages 12-18) are selected in a reaping ceremony on the 4th of July.  In Haymitch’s case, his selection does not come from the sorting jar and is basically, to him, unfair.  I mean, let’s face it, you care about him from the get-go.  He is a dutiful son and a loving boyfriend to a Covey girl.  He is trying to protect her when it happens.

So here’s the thing:  Suzanne Collins is a self-proclaimed army brat.  She grew up around the military and around conversations of war and destruction and so forth.  So there is a very sad tone to the novels, where people are living in poverty and seem to feel guilty for trying to steal a modicum of happiness.  People are basically, doomed.  And there is tremendous violence in these novels.  I am really not sure how she concocts all these different ways for people to die via weapons, poison, drone attacks, fire, et al.  Somehow she invents new scenarios that leave you completely grossed out.

The Coveys are the only group, a band of gypsy singers trapped in District 12 as we learned in Collins’ previous prequel, who resonate with New Age thinking – eternal life stuff, focusing on beauty, art, music, color, love, etc.

Haymitch Abernathy doesn’t really do that.  The whole time he thinks he will die.  He doesn’t expect to win and basically, keeps complaining about the situation he’s in, all while doing his best to protect others, to trust others.  He wants to be this person who acts in a way that his family and others can be proud of him.   And yet, he doesn’t think he can or will or, well, the inevitable happens.  He does end up killing a few kids.  No spoilers – he wins at the Hunger Games but he loses everything else.  His biggest fear manifests and everyone knows that fears win out in the end.  Is there a way to live without fear?  To commit to a belief system where only good things happen?  Not in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games world, unfortunately.

It’s tragic.  I didn’t cry for him because he quite literally goes on and on about the negative implications of his actions, he ends up allowing the negativity to defeat him and finally, he winds up hating himself.

The thing is – his gut is telling him all along what his heart wants to reject.  In the end, he spills his guts and we love him for it.  Great metaphor, Suzanne.

Lucky us in the real world with the power to choose.  Life is supposed to be fun and the whole point is to find what you like and do it.  If it is a family you want, if it is an activity you desire; if it is alone time you crave, you know?  Do that.

And even if you can achieve that rose-colored glasses outlook to life where following joy resides, trust your gut.  Because you are not even supposed to force relationships or chase happiness.  It will all come to you.  It will follow you without you having to/trying to manipulate the outcome.

Lesson(s) learned.  Thank you, Suzanne Collins, for helping me realize that I can close chapters of my life and move into new and exciting ones instead of just waiting/wanting to die.

book reports, books, Karen Tashkovski

Book Report: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

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I’ve been  wanting to revisit From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg for a long while.  The copyright on this book is 1965.  I’m pretty sure I read it when I was the same age as protagonist Claudia Kincaid, so I’m guessing that was a half century ago and yet, for many years of late, I would bring this book up in conversation with students anytime we talked about field trips.  I had wanted them or at least one of them to read it before we took the three different bus trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan between 2006 and 2008.

Once arrived (all three times!), my students behaved in similar fashion to those descriptions Claudia makes about other children as relayed in deposition manner to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – ungrateful, inconsiderate, not really wanting to learn anything, etc.  None of them wanted to hide in the museum either or solve a big mystery.   Poo-poo on them.

I remembered the bit in the story about the siblings running away from home to hide in the Met – I couldn’t remember why, how they did it and how Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler fit into the story.

It was a refreshing reread and impressive to find Claudia and her somewhat reluctant brother having their adventure include learning…and research!  It was also evident to me why this book resonated with my twelve-year-old self and why on the reread all these years later I sobbed uncontrollably once I got to the final page.

This is a story about propelling oneself in the direction of adventure and dreams, of willing oneself to plan and execute an idea eliminating fear of future consequences in order to fulfill some ethereal secret dream.  It was relatable to me then and more so now.

In many ways I am Claudia, both pre-teen and adult Claudia simultaneously and I’m also Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, although not quite as old AND I’m Elaine Konigsburg, do you know what I mean?  Because those dreams you have as a kid – they never leave you and when you are older and you review your progress, you kind of find out that you are either rolling out new dreams to chase or encouraging others to dream big.  And running away as a means to authenticity is very appealing.

As you begin to read the first chapter, you learn about Claudia (Claude)  Kincaid and her brother James (Jamie).  You think this is just a third person perspective thingy until you realize that Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is narrating the whole scenario as expressed in a letter to her lawyer.  It’s a genius POV because the audience learns who she is but not why she knows this stuff until the moment that the characters’ lives intersect.

There were no Amber Alerts back in 1965.  The frantic parents are mentioned but not so much to invoke a fear-based drama or the potential for a horror story.  And it is also not an instruction pamphlet on how to run away from a nice suburban home in Connecticut.

It’s more about being heard.  It’s about being responsible about an irresponsible choice.  It’s ultimately about being seen authentically as well.  Being seen and heard.  I mean, you’ll have to read it and decide that between-the-lines stuff for yourself.  The message is not just for kids.

Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is eighty-two and she is preparing her will, revising her will, selling artwork from her vast collection and preparing to down-size.  She is a wealthy widow who is still spry with her wits about her.  She is like a kind fairy god-mother to these children.

Elaine passed away in 2013.  She was eighty-three.  In the afterward portion of my copy of the book, one she’d added for the book’s thirty-fifth anniversary, she shared some anecdotes with regard to writing the book, researching the landscape and fictionalizing the part about Michaelangelo.  I really fell in love with this woman I did not ever know, because her depth of character was just…epic.

I got my copy of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg from the public library.  You can also purchase a copy here.

 

art, books, Karen Tashkovski

Book Report: Just Kids

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I’m still digesting this emotionally charged and poetic memoir by Patti Smith. I finished reading Just Kids twenty-four hours ago.

At first I wasn’t that into her poetic prose, the dream-like quality, specifically, to the way she describes New York City in the mid-sixties, the references to a love of specific literature, writers and poets, the name dropping, you know. It seemed like a journey I had refused to take.

And that’s because in 1985, armed with my fashion design BFA, I headed to Manhattan for interviews and was offered jobs that paid nothing. I didn’t want to live in poverty until I made it as an artist, so I didn’t. I stayed home and clunked around, moved to Florida for a bit, came back and got that MS in Art Ed and worked doing that for thirty years.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in myself, was it? That I didn’t identify with other artists? The dream of being a successful artist has always been there, but not the bohemian stuff. When she writes about the drugs and the deaths (overdoses, suicides) of those in and around their friend group – and these were the successful ones – the Janis Joplins, Edie Sedgewicks and Jimi Hendrixes – I just felt like, really??? They all thought they were profound and super talented but none of them practiced mindfulness. When Smith started dabbling with marijuana, I was screaming at her – don’t do that!!!! You are supposed to be the voice of reason!

But, you know, they were just kids.

As I continued reading, I learned so much about these two artists, Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, how they were so sure of themselves despite not even having food or shelter. Different times.

I thought about my parents and how they were only a little bit older than those two, how they got married at nineteen and twenty-one and bought us a home around the same time as Just Kids, and raised us in a great neighborhood even though they made, like, nothing. I think Dad told me he made $57.00 a week or maybe a month, I don’t remember.

They were just kids too.

By the end of the book I was devouring the poetic prose, crying, like, I could barely see the pages. Because it is a love story, one of enduring, unconditional love and respect despite the pain of choices made and directions taken.

Mapplethorpe is famous for homo-erotic photographs in which he was an active participant- this he thought crucial in his commitment to authenticity – that he fully immerse in the process and transform from artist to Artist. Smith shares the genesis of said work, how he punished himself for these lewd thoughts yet felt compelled to progress with that trajectory. He’d said he’d wanted to sell his soul to the devil for fame and fortune and quite possibly believed he’d done that, the Catholic guilt that prevalent coursing through his veins and brain.

Smith is almost an anthropologist here, even as she documents this true saga of her life. She doesn’t judge. She shares her own rise to success as poet and rock star, carefully navigating her stuff only as it intertwines with his even though her stuff is the stuff of legend.

Again, my comparison – how I’m always telling you I don’t feel like I am living authentically. And yet, I just don’t believe that I need to participate in fantasies. I don’t need you to understand me/dissect my inner desires. I mean, what the heck – why must we bleed, why die for our art? It’s so extreme. I certainly can’t compare my success to theirs, you see? I’m not right. I’m not wrong, but I am frustrated by choices. Hence the gallons of tears I shed.

She married someone else in the end and had a beautiful yet, in my opinion, brief blissful family life but she doesn’t say much about her husband save how wonderful he was (he died a mere five years after Mapplethorpe’s demise).

It’s a bittersweet hero’s journey. Someone made a movie about it. Patti Smith didn’t give her blessing. It stars Matt Smith of Dr. Who and The Crown fame as Mapplethorpe.

I wouldn’t have (given my blessing) either. It took Patti Smith ten years to write this book. It’s a perfect love letter penned to her first love, trusted friend and fellow artist, so worthy of the National Book Award for non-fiction it received. Read it and weep.

You’re welcome. <3

https://amzn.to/4cvlluk

book reports, Karen Tashkovski

Book Report: The Big Door Prize

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I can’t remember the last time I wrote a book synopsis. I’m going to guess around 1975. I have never joined a book club, so that doesn’t help. Three months ago, a friend let me borrow a couple of books that I neglected to finish. When people recommend things to me, I often wonder if they know me at all.

Okay, with that disclaimer over with, let’s move on to my new blog category – Book Report. This may or may not be a monthly gig, as I haven’t been reading a lot. But I went to the eye doctor to establish that I still have 20/20 vision yet paid the extra money to get two pairs of designer progressives (readers to make the font bigger, lol). I need a reason to wear them, so no excuses. And, this book, The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh is worth sharing.

I have Apple TV + . I got it to watch Palm Royale and found their other series to be pretty great. The Big Door Prize just finished a second season and as I was scrolling the credits, I noticed it was based on a novel.

The premise is that a mystery machine appears in the grocery store. Called DNAMIX in the book and MORPHO in the show, it offers the customers a card listing their life potentials. This causes many individuals to quit their jobs and follow the instructed path – that is, if they resonate with the result.

The main character is a teacher and since I am about to retire after thirty years of teaching, I was thinking about this chosen profession – was it the right one? Will I now seek my true heart’s desire and what exactly is it? It isn’t/wasn’t teaching, right? Is that machine real? Do I even know myself? Why don’t you just tell me what it is….

Not sure if this is a spoiler, but the teacher gets…teacher. This made me cry. It just sucked. For me, not necessarily for the character. Well, the television show didn’t answer my questions about this mysterious machine. Was it indeed magical and where were they going with it? I decided to read the book and found the answer to that question.

Not sure how they will work back to that result in the show because the characters are not quite the same. Funny how they relocated the Trina character. She is the priest’s niece in the book and the teacher’s daughter in the series. Others have different professions in the book versus the show, and some characters in the Apple + incarnation don’t even exist in the book. The gist of the characters is similar though. The way you end up caring about them in both is top-notch.

The author dives inside the characters’ heads. Exposition more than dialogue here and it works because it really packs an emotional punch. I grew to love each one with every page turn because I learned their motivations for action based on their past experiences.

I love a good depth of character, I really do!

The novel is filled with humor and I am impressed by the differences in each character’s inner and outer voices, mannerisms, senses of humor and ability versus inability to edit themselves verbally. So good.

The Louisiana town is fictional. The author is from Louisiana so these bits of information regarding life in that neck of the woods, that write-what-you-know thing gives the story that fleshed out vibe. Are they parts of real people? One likes Pokemon card games, another plays the trombone, and two others have medical issues. There is a lot of relatable stuff – like, perhaps you know people like this or you think, does Milton Walsh know me?

All the story lines unite at the end of the novel. It’s so good!

I can’t get enough – meaning I love that the TV series takes everything a step further, uncovering new plots and new connections. I think when these producers purchase the rights to novels they pay the author one price then take their liberties. I watched a YouTube video with him and he said he was incredibly grateful for that turn of events. At some point the author must let go of the desire to control his own characters and allow them to morph(o).

Let me know what you think.

I borrowed the book from the Onondaga Public Library but you can also acquire it here.