#NaNoReMo Ends

Today ends February, and so goes 2013's National Novel Reading Month. I've seen several people knocking off their classics in the last few days, and I've got particular pride in Tony Noland for finally conquering Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. I really ought to get to that, especially after how much I enjoyed The Crying of Lot 49.

Middlemarch's 1,000 pages too me twenty days, including the two I spent stuck in trains and depots. Having an enormous classic is a great way to pass long waits and, it turns out, to keep strangers from talking to you. It's easily one of the most ambitious novels I've read and has made me question many of the conventions of satire and social criticism. There's an essential empathy, a mandatory understanding behind any unkind action, that makes most conflict-writing feel... well, "lazy" is a nice way of putting it. You can read my full review right here.


I'll pitch that we run it in January next year, 2014, for a few reasons. January would let everyone start the year off with conquering a classic, and there's a little New Years power to such things. January also has three more days than most Februaries, and there would be no unintentional slight against Black History Month, one of the few "official months" I hold in serious reverence.

If you have a National Novel Reading Month wrap-up post, please link to it in the comments. I'll create a junction post here for fellow readers to blog hop across.


1. Cindy Vaskova's tremendous closing on Frankenstein.
2. Eric Krause finishes Princess of Mars.
3. Tony Noland finishes Gravity's Rainbow.

So, who's finished? And what are you reading next? I'm deciding between Brandon Sanderson's The Final Empire and Joe Abercrombie's Red Country.

#NaNoReMo Update #3 – Almost Done

I’m nearly finished with Middlemarch, and it feels like I’ve been cheating in my 900-page climb. You see, my grandmother had a serious health issue and I had to travel to Maryland to help her. That meant taking four trains, two light rails, a cab, and spending an additional six hours in lobbies. That also meant ample time to digest chatty 1800s satire.

She's doing much better, thank you.

It’s funny reading satire when you’re being altruistic. 20^th century satire, and thus far, most of 21^st century satire hinges on a cynicism that all but denies the feelings that made me travel last week. Even Evans/Eliot’s American contemporary, Mark Twain, would never have written a fictional protagonist thinking or acting as I did, unless it was to mock whatever petty foibles I exhibited along the way to good intentions. It reminds that the scalpel is not the only instrument.

Middlemarch is highly unusual satire, especially set against the modern strains. It’s not invented to condemn an ideology, religion or social institution, but rather to rigorously examine why its many characters screw up and hurt each other. Mr. Bulstrode’s Protestantism is a moral barrier he’s constantly trying to rationalize around in order to be selfish; Rosamond’s naivety corrodes her life; Mr. Lydgate’s inability to politic constantly puts his public works in jeopardy; both the couples of Mary and Fred, and of Dorothea and Will, almost invent ways to not live happily ever after together because they overthink and misread too often. She's beaten me to much of wanted to do in Literature by over a hundred years.

Because it’s gentler and not so obsessed with a singular evil, it’s easier for me to take seriously than 1984 or The Daily Show. And I enjoy The Daily Show, but Christ, everything Republicans do is the worst thing in human history. I’m still coming to terms with the phenomenon of comedy performed for applause instead of laughter. It feels like intellectual cancer.

Me and the world's largest copy of Middlemarch.

Too much of modern satire is essential fictional polemic, identifier an “other guy,” and painting them as dumb and/or evil, with only the most minimal examinations of why. It shuts down your empathy towards this “other” in favor of the pleasant outrages of having an enemy. As much as I admired Catch-22 in my teens, this ought to be the ground floor of satire, not the heavens.

Middlemarch brazenly scorns hypocrisy, misogyny, ignorance and dogma, but frequently does so with colossal inner working. It makes me wonder if I wouldn’t have preferred 1984 as a book from the perspective of an actual Big Brother on the rise and why he made his awful decisions.

It certainly makes me think about where satire could have developed if Middlemarch had won. It’s not as gratifying without the obvious audience pandering of modern satire, with victim-heroes and strawman-villains. I can see why it lost. But I wonder if this wouldn’t better serve the psyche, to constantly be reminded that every potential for exterior failure exists within, as a means of progress towards remedy.

Middlemarch Character Guide, #NaNoReMo Update #2

For my second #NaNoReMo update on Middlemarch, I'm sharing my character list. This has been vastly helpful going through the residents of Middlemarch, who have sprawled out for 400 pages so far, and have 500 more to go. While the journeys are distinct, there are at least a dozen key players amid a booming cast, and I have the worst memory for names.

Beats Downton Abbey.

Dorothea Brooke (sister): Christian, conservative; loves Pascal, perceives herself as logical. Doesn’t understand art. A focused lens through which Evans is clearly going to fire satire.

Celia: Dorothea’s sister. First awakened lady, starts questioning things and thinks she likes it.

Rev Edward Casaubon: stuffy misogynist, a fixer-upper of a man. No passion about him. Kind of a tool. So naturally, he marries Dorothea.

Rosamond Vincy: Is so used to being pursued that she thinks everybody is in love with her. Well-read but not particularly bright. Sometimes the strawman. At one point falls in love with the idea of a man falling in love with her, even though she doesn’t like him very much. He is not in love with her. Favorite description: “She found time also to read the best novels, and even the second best, and she knew much poetry by heart.” Something about "even the second best" slays me.

Mary: Rosamond’s buddy; shrewd, judgmental. Best quote: “It is the blameless who are most exasperating.”

Fred Vincy: Rosamond's brother. Romantic, might love Mary; down on his luck, a debtor; probably screwed.

Mr. Lydgate: swears he’s going to be rational about women. Didn’t see a black widow coming. Is probably screwed. Low social standing since he’s only a surgeon, not a proper doctor. Very progressive, seems like he might have the closest to Evans/Eliot’s point of view on social issues like skepticism and compassion.

Mr. Bulstrode: Middlemarch powerbroker. Can be meanspirited, very political. Doesn’t eat much or indulge in many vices, yet I can’t stop imagining him as huge, usually as Hardy from Laurel & Hardy.

Mr. Farebrother: Mr. Lamppost Name. Gambles only to support his sick mother, a preacher people from other neighborhoods visit to watch, almost religiously pluralistic or deistic, and so nice he won’t be mad if you vote against him for a job he needs. This guy is screwed.

Mrs. Garth: Mary's mom. Smart lady, probably leader of her household; harder on women than men. Strong female characters who hates women?

Mr. Garth: He’ll have to ask his wife for a personality.

#NaNoReMo Update #1

So February has started and we all had our first weekend reading our classics. There's still time to hop on if you have a classic you've been putting off too long.

My pick last year was Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, which didn't go as well as I'd hoped. This year it's Middlemarch by Mary Anne Evans (as "George Eliot"). It was was originally a serial, a novel in eight released Books. I finished Book One this weekend and am a healthy way into Book Two, wherein we're still meeting the cast. It's so enormous that I'm keeping a list to keep them straight. Recent health problems have demanded I spend more time than usual sitting still, which has afforded me extra time to attack my classic.

Upon the first chapters, I feared this would be another Austen adventure. The scenes are primarily domestic or at someone else's house, and the dialogue is overwhelmingly gossip about someone's life or direction. Early chapters especially have the clash of men and women as prospects for each other, though there are always sparks of more going on. Further, Evans was every bit the whit that Austen was, with cutting lines and turn-arounds in conversation, though many more applied to the wry and detached narrator. I struggle to pick a favorite line or passage, but this is the most recent nest of thoughts to tickle my brain:

 "Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, 

but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions,

bring their provisions to a common table and mess together,

feeding out of the common store according to their appetite."

It's perhaps double the cast of Pride & Prejudice, but tenfold the content of personality, including women who are interested not just in marriage, but education, politics, religion, literature, foreign language and a deal more. A few characters are driven into romance, and to my eye, at least as keenly as Austen, but only a minority are defined by it. There is also at least one made a fool by the preoccupation, which lends necessary variety to the execution. The best effect is that I'm actually rooting for a few of these people to find happy endings, though that's dangerous in a satire.

It's also splendid to read a little reference-comedy about John Milton. It felt like someone was letting a little air of class into my room.

The most striking element thus far is the range of themes Evans/Eliot tackles. Scenes and chapters seem to almost deliberately disagree in their approaches, or someone’s opinions will fly against the narrator. Dorothea is introduced to us with almost too much “telling,” about her life, opinions, looks and behaviors, heaped upon in narration and then dialogue. A Book later, an artist deems her too complex to capture in art. It’s partially my bias to seeing the novel as an artform, but this artist is condemning the ability of the arts to capture life, which the narrator seems to think he/she is doing constantly.

How is everyone else doing with their books?