The Unfortunate Truths about Society

Vanity Fair, by W.M. Thackeray
A terrible book to read. It is a social-satirical novel, "invites us to consider which is to blame: the opportunist or the society that makes opportunism necessary". It is hard to read since not a single main character is likeable. The book is over 700 pages long, and there are often passages where the author seems to be talking to his contemporaries, during which I had absolutely no idea what he was saying, or even cared to know.

"Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?"

"Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue."

"At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw."

"Praise, everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word."

"It was his counsel had brought about this marriage, and all that was to ensue from it. And why was it? Because he loved her so much that he could not bear to see her unhappy: or because his own sufferings of suspense were so unendurable that he was glad to crush them at once--as we hasten a funeral after a death, or, when a separation from thos we love is imminent, cannot rest until the parting be over."

"He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness take the lead in the world?"

"And whereas, there is now hardly a town of France or Italy in which you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with that happy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere, swindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques of upon crdulous bankers...easy travellers of their money at cards,--even public libraries of their books:--thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor Anglais, travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating, were cheated."

"And as dubious goods or letters are passed through an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then pronounced clean--many a lady whose reputation would be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes through the wholesome ordeal of the royal presence, and issues from it free from all taint."

Georgy's genius - "On Selfishness.--Of all the vices which degrade the human characte, Selfishness is the most odious and contemptible. An undue love ofSelf leads to the most monstrous crimes; and occasions the greatest misfortunes both in States and Families..." uses examples of Achilles and Napoleon to further his point.

On Amelia's captivity. "The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise; and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire." (someone wrote best passage ever)



Matilda, by Roald Dahl
This was one of my favorite books as a child. I was actually a little disappointed when I read it again, but it is a great children's book as Dahl puts a fun spin on many harsh truths about life.

"She seemed to know that neither crying nor sulking ever got anyone anywhere. The only sensible thing to do when you are attacked is, as Napoleon once said, to counter-attack."

"I'm afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl."

"Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable. No parent is going to believe this pigtail story, not in a million years. Mine wouldn't. They'd call me a liar."




God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, by Kurt Vonnegut
Another satire about human nature with topics including capitalism, socialism and sexuality.

Wisdom of the Senator, Eliot's super capitilistic father:

"In summation: he said, I see two alternaties before us. We can write morals into law, and enforce those morals harshly, or we can return to a true Free Enterprise System, which has the sink-or-swim justice of Caesar Augustus built into it. I emphatically favor the latter alternative. We must be hard, for we must become again a nation of swimmers, with the sinkers quietly disposing of themselves.""Eliot did to the word love what the Russians did to the word democracy. If Eliot is going to love everybody, no matter what they are, no matter what they do, then those of us who love particular people for particular reasons had better find ourselves a new word." He looked up at an oil painting of his deceased wife. "For instance--I loved her more than I loved our garbage collector, which makes me guilty of the most unspeakable of modern crimes: Dis-crim-i-nay-tion."

About the law he tried to create that would make publication or possession of obscene materials a Federal offense, which currently exists in the Comstock Laws, but in addition defined obscenity. "The difference between pornography and art is bodily hair." So are women who have gotten a Brazilian considered art?

The only character in the book that I would say is a hero, and I believe the only person Vonnegut is defining as truly good--Harry Pena

"He lit a cigar, departed--went fishing for real fish with his two real sons--in a real boat on a salty sea."

"There were opera glasses on each table, in order that guests might watch Harry and his boys clean out their traps. And when the fisherfoldk were performing out there on the briny deep, Bunny went from table to table, explaining with gusto and expertise what they were doing, and why."

"All three were as satisfied with life as men can ever be."

"Real people don't make their livings that way any more. Those three romantics out there make as much sense as marie Antoinette and her milkmaids. When the bankruptcy proceedings begin--in a week, a month, a year--they'll find out that their only economic value was as animated wallpaper for my restaurant here." Bunny, to his credit, was not happy about this. "that's all over, men working with their hands and backs. They are not needed."

What is wrong with much of society: "Your fortune is the most important single determinant of what you think of yourself and of what others think of you. Because of the money, you are extraordinary. Without it, for example, you would not now be taking the priceless time of a senior partner in mcAlister, Robjent, Reed and McGee. "If you give away your money you will become utterly ordinary, unlessyou happen to be a genius...And genius or not, without money you'll surely be less comfortable and free. Not only that, but you will be volunteering your descendents for the muggy, sorehead way of life peculiar to persons who might have been rich and free, had not a soft-headed ancestor piddled a fortune away...Money is dehydrated Utopia...to be born rich and to stay rich is something less than a felony."

"This is America! And america is one place in this sorry world where people shouldn't have to apologize for being poor. The question in America should be, 'Is this guy a good citizen? Is he honest? Does he pull his own weight?'"

"What you did in Rosewater County was far from insane. It was quite possibly the most important social experiment of our time, for it dealt on a ver small scale with a problem whose queasy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: How to love people who have no use? "In time, almost all men and women will become worthless as producers of goods, food, services, and more machines, as sources of practical ideas in the areas of economics, engineering, and probably medicine, too. Soo--if we can't find reasons and methods for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well, as has so often been suggested, rub them out."

Achievement

Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, continued


“If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell and ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake—and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem."
He looked at her blankly. It sounded like some sort of monstrous corruption that precluded the possibility of wondering whether anyone could mean it; he wondered only what was the point of uttering it…"


“Why yes, I can,” said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. “The man who uses another’s pity for him as a weapon.”


Dr. Stadler “They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don’t know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would be able to bear…Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don’t respect?”


“A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving. If the only goal possible was to wheedle a precarious moment’s favor from men who held guns, then neither action nor desire could exist any longer.
Then could life?—he asked himself indifferently. Life, he thought, had been defined as motion; man’s life was purposeful motion; what was the state of a being to whom purpose and motion were denied, a being held in chains but left to breathe and to see all the magnificence of the possibilities he could have reached, left to scream “Why?” and to be shown the muzzle of a gun as sole explanation?”


sob sister to Cherryl “you think that if one gets hurt in life, it’s through one’s own sins—and that’s true, in the long run. But there are people who’ll try to hurt you through the good they see in you—knowing that it’s the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don’t let it break you when you discover that.”

The Unbelievability of Life

This book is a collection of works that Vonnegut put together, most are speeches or essay that he wrote, a few are selections from other authors that are in some form related to him. It was interesting, although not as quick of a read as his fiction, and not quite as entertaining. Regardless Vonnegut still has some brilliant ideas.

Palm Sunday, by Vonnegut

"No offense intended, but it would never occur to me to look for the best minds in any generation in an undergraduate English department anywhere. I would certainly try the physics or the music department first--and after that biochemistry."

Haha, I agree. He also says something in the book about how he thinks the best writers are also not English majors, which I also would agree with. I think that in order to have something great to write about one should also have had experiences worth writing about. I'm not saying that all English majors don't, but it's less likely.

"We would have to understand from the first the scientific fact that any wound we inflict on the life-support systems of this planet is likely to be quite permanent. So anyone who wounded the planet, and then pretended to heal it, would simply be another hypocrite. He would remain quite permanently an evil and therefore disgusting human being."

Here, here. Although that would make pretty much everyone living in a developed country a hypocrite and disgusting. But at least it makes one think. And I would rather be a hypocrite than a person who continues to be unaware or uncaring about the environment.

"This is a matter of genetics, I think. People are born caring or not caring about managing money well.
We are all experiments in enthusiasms, narrow and preordained. I write."

I agree with this statement. I think I was born not caring about making money. However, there are enthusiasms that I do care about that require having money, and so I am not beginning to care about at least managing money fairly well, and finding something that I enjoy doing that will enable me to make money without having to care about making money.

In his play about the play Jekyll and Hyde, "This starts off a production number about how everybody loves monsters, but that not everybody is lucky enough to be a monster, that some people have to be good-looking and therefore hated by everyone, and so on."

A recurring theme.

About Celine, "He himself must have become thoroughly sick of his head occasionally, and I will guess as to its chief defect. I think it lacked the damping apparatus which most of us have, which keeps us from being swamped by the unbelievability of life as it really is."


"Vanity rather than wisdom determines how the world is run."

Vanity is another recurring theme, which I think has existed in every book I've read this summer.

On graphing the plot of Cinderella and the creation myth of the Old Testament. "And then I saw that the stroke of midnight looked exactly like the unique creation myth in the Old Testament. And then I saw that the rise to bliss at the end was identical with the expectation of redemption as expressed in primitive Christianity. The tales were identical."

Interesting. Although personally I think Belle from Beauty and the Beast is a much better heroine.

On his mentor, who asked "What is it an artist does--a painter, a writer, a sculptor--?"
... "His answer was this: "the artist says, 'I can do very little about the chaos around me, but at least I can reduce to perfect order this square of canvas, this piece of paper, this chunk of stone.'""

Purpose

So I'm pretty far behind in typing up my collection of quotes from the books I've been reading. Mostly because I started reading Atlas Shrugged which took about 10 days to finish. I also made note of so many sections of the book that there are far too many to comment on here, so now I'm going through them and will be posting less than just those I thought interesting, and only those that I feel are most interesting. Also I decided that will write an essay for the Atlas Shrugged contest, so I may post some of my ideas on that here. We'll see. But at any rate, I'll probably be reading a bit less when I start writing.


Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

“She never tried to explain why she liked the railroad. Whatever it was that others felt, she knew that this was one emotion for which they had no equivalent and no response. She felt the same emotion in school, in classes of mathematics, the only lessons she liked. She felt the excitement of solving problems, the insolent delight of taking up a challenge and disposing of it without effort, the eagerness to meet another, harder test. She felt, at the same time, a growing respect for the adversary, for a science that was so clean, so strict, so luminously.”


“Francisco, what’s the most depraved type of human being?”
“The man without a purpose.”
…
“Well, I’ve always been unpopular in school and it didn’t bother me, but now I’ve discovered the reason. It’s an impossible kind of reason. They dislike me, not because I do things badly, but because I do them well. They dislike me because I’ve always had the best grades in class.”

“She knew that fear was useless, that he would do what he wished, that the decision was his, that he left nothing possible to her except the thing she wanted most—to submit. She had no conscious realization of his purpose, her vague knowledge of it was wiped out, she had no power to believe it clearly, in this moment, to believe it about herself, she knew only that she was afraid—yet what she felt was as if she were crying to him: Don’t ask me for it—oh, don’t ask me—do it!”

“To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth…To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his…No, not Francisco d’Anconia, not Hank Rearden, not any man she had ever met or admired…A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience…She twisted herself in a slow, faint movement, her breasts pressed to the desk; she felt the longing in her muscles, in the nerves of her body.
Is that what you want? Is it as simple as that?—she thought, but knew that it was not simple. There was some unbreakable link between her love for her work and the desire of her body; as if one gave her the right to the other, the right and the meaning; as if one were the completion of the other—and the desire would never be satisfied, except by a being of equal greatness.”

Crossing Boundaries

So I picked up this young adult book from the library that I had remembered liking when I was younger.

Absolutely Normal Chaos, by Sharon Creech
Like many young adult novels, this story is about a girl who in the period of a summer loses her innocence and realizes that life is one hell of a journey.

“So it did taste like something?”
“Well, yes, it did….”
“Like what? What did it taste like?”
She had her eyes closed as if she was trying to remember, and she was moving her lips around. Well, I guess it tasted like…chicken.”

Many times when I start reading a book that I’ve read before I’ll gradually remember the plot and how the story ends. That didn’t happen when I read this book. However this quote stuck in my memory… Isn’t it interesting how some of the strongest childhood memories are ones dealing with sex?


“If you didn’t let yourself like people, you’d shrivel up.”


Aunt Radene says that you just have to do your best to make the world a better place. I said I wasn’t so sure I could make the world a better place, and she said, “Oh, you already have, Mary Lou, you already have.”
How does a person ever know that for sure?



This was the first book I had ever read by Nicholas Sparks. I should have probably picked a different one, but at the time it was the only one in the library, not including the Notebook and A Walk to Remember, both of which I didn’t really want to read since I had already seen the movies. But it was a quick read and pretty enjoyable. I found a few sections that I could really relate to, which I included here.


Nights in Rodanthe, by Nicholas Sparks

As she turned to face him, however, she couldn’t help but stare.
It was his eyes, she thought, that did it. They were light blue, so light they seemed almost translucent, but there was an intensity in them that she’d never seen before in anyone else.
He knows me, she suddenly thought. Or could know me if I gave him a chance.
As quickly as those thoughts came, she dismissed them, thinking them ridiculous.

I think Sparks must have stolen these thoughts from my head. Wish I’d had the guts to act on them though.

Everything about him made her long for something she had never known: the way he made what he was doing look easy, the shape of his hips and legs in his jeans as he stood on the ladder above her, those eyes that always reflected what he was thinking and feeling. Standing in the pouring rain, she felt the pull of the person he was, and the person she realized she wanted to be.

She would cross a boundary she’d erected in her mind, and there was no coming back from something like that. Making love to Paul would mean that they would share a bond for the rest of their lives, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: They wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, Adrienne thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future, while most older people believed that they lay in the past.

The Appearance of Moderate Disinterest

In actuality I had the idea for this blog last week, and have since read a quite a few books. So I will be spending the next few days catching up. I'll begin with comments on quotes from the two Jane Austen novels that I most recently read.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
One of the best novels ever written.

‘ “His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, every thing in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.”
…
“Pride,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, “is a very common failing I believe… Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”’
I agree. Also note that this discussion takes place on page 20 of the edition that I am reading, and describes one of two main points that Austen makes in this book.

“We can all begin freely—a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better shew more affection than she feels.” (Charlotte)
I really should take Charlottes advice to heart. I know I keep my feelings more guarded than I should. Maybe I’m scared of rejection. I’m not sure. I just wish it was easier. I wish there was a way to just know if there is a mutual interest from the very beginning. My life would be much more interesting then.

“We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.” (Lizzy)
I find it interesting that this point is brought up in many other books, from varying styles and time periods, that I have read.

‘ “What made you so shy of me, when you first called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did you look as if you did not care about me?” (Lizzy)
“Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement.”(Darcy)
“But I was embarrassed.”
“And so was I.”
“You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.”
“A man who had felt less, might.”
“How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give, and that I should be so reasonable as to admit it!”’
Similar to the point that Charlotte made. I wonder how many great relationships were never formed by the appearance of indifference, when in fact the exact opposite was true.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
I believe that this book is both the worst and best novel that Jane Austen wrote. First why it is the worst:
-The first volume is utterly boring. Fanny Price, the heroine, reminds one of a rabbit, too shy and too timid throughout the whole book that I never felt any respect for her. The second volume however is more interesting as Henry Crawford decides to woo Fanny, and the flattery is so great that I felt I was blushing while reading that part. However it ends terribly as the bad characters come to bad ends, and the good to good ends, and everyone remains largely unchanged. – In my high school English classes, my teachers often said that one aspect of a good story is that it has dynamic characters. That is the characters change throughout the story, usually because life throws them into a predicament in which they have to learn and become a better person before they are through. All of the characters in this novel are static. Eh, one might argue that Fanny changes some. But in my opinion, not enough.
However, this is also the reason why it may be one of Jane Austen’s best novels. Because I think that it is more realistic. Bad people do not miraculously become good. Good people are not eager to forgive the follies and vices of others. People’s characters do not change all that much with so little to provoke change as many books would like us to believe.
And now the few quotes I thought would be worthwhile to include:

“…There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient—at others, so bewildered and so weak—and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!—We are to be sure a miracle every way—but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out.” (Fanny)
In recent years, we have learned so much about memory and how our brain contains information. Just a couple of semesters ago I did a report for my engineering communications class about how dopamine receptors have an effect on memory as we age. However, I still feel like Fanny’s speech (which I believe this is an excerpt of the longest speech she gives in the whole book), is true today. And it also brings to mind one of my favorite paintings, Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” which I have hanging on the wall next to me.

“His conviction of her regard for him was sometimes very strong; he could look back on a long course of encouragement, and she was as perfect in disinterested attachment as in every thing else.”
Same theme as in P&P. But here Austen makes it seem like the disinterest in proper? Maybe I should have lived in the 19th century.

“In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson’s celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.”

:)

Secrets of Existence

This summer I have decided to read. A lot. At first I wasn’t sure why I made this decision. To better myself by reading great works of literature? Maybe. To keep myself entertained while school is out, since there are no new shows on TV? Well yes. But I realized the real reason while I was reading Vonnegut’s Palm Sunday.

“Meditation is holy to me, for I believe that all the secrets of existence and nonexistence are somewhere in our heads—or in other people’s heads.

“And I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.

“By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well.

“This to me is a miracle.” --Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday

Exactly.

So, recently I have acquired the habit of earmarking pages when I come upon a line or a section of a book that I find ... interesting, profound, shocking, ridiculous, hilarious... you get the idea. I was thinking that rather than just earmarking pages, and possibly never looking at them again, that I would go ahead and write down the excerpts that I find most interesting here. So we’ll see how long this lasts.