David Copperfield. Despite my bitching about Dickens, I am finding that I get into moods where I don’t want to listen to anything but Dickens on audio. This recording isn’t as good as the Frank Muller version of Great Expectations, unfortunately; the reader should really stop doing different voices for the characters because every one of his voices is more annoying than his normal reading voice. It’s too bad, because the reader, Frederick Davidson, has a nice clear tone and keeps an even pace, and if he would just knock off the simpering tones he uses for David and his mother, and the weird croaking voice he uses for all of the lower-class characters, male and female, this would be a very good recording.

I still probably wouldn’t like the book, though. Between David Copperfield and Great Expectations, I am remembering why I hated Dickens for so long. I might have to reread Bleak House right now to remind myself of Dickens’s redeeming qualities.

Great Expectations. My second time through this one, but I remain unmoved. I am mostly over my dislike of Dickens, but I am never going to love Great Expections … mostly because I just can’t stand Pip. Maybe I’m not supposed to love Pip, but I’m fairly certain I’m not supposed to want to take him out behind the forge and beat the crap out of him.

Watson’s Apology. You can blame my lack of recent updates on this book — it is sapping my will to read, and my will to write about reading. I think this will be my last attempt at reading one of Bainbridge’s books, and I am going to set this one aside without finishing it.

I don’t know what it is about Bainbridge that makes her books such slogfests. All of her works are very short, around 200 pages, and from the bare plot outlines they always sound like they are going to be page-turners: an explorer’s crew gets lost in the Antarctic, the Titanic sinks, a Victorian scholar murders his wife of thirty years. (All of these are based on true events.) But they aren’t page-turners; every one of these turns into the book you dread, the one that leads you to see if there is anything on TV rather than sit down to read for a while. I’m not sure what the problem is. Her prose is occasionally slow-going but it’s not awful or complex. I think the difficulty might be with her narrative style, with the way she hides the ball so that her characters seem to develop out of thin air with unexplained outbursts and moments of violence. I was a little more forgiving the last time I read one of her books, but this time I’m bored and I’m sick of this novel and I am not sufficiently interested in these characters to want to spend another three weeks with them, which is how long it has taken me to make it halfway through this tiny little book.

Great Expectations. I finished this for the first time in January of 2003, but I think I actually read the first half some time over the summer of 2002. In any event, I’ve forgotten a lot of details.

The Frank Muller audio book is pure pleasure, like most Dickens on audio. Also, I am listening to this on my shiny new iPod, which I love in a way that could fairly be described as unhealthy.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Such a compelling story; it’s hard to believe that it took another quarter century to eradicate slavery after this was published. If you are an American and this narrative wasn’t pressed on you in high school, you should take the time to read it. It’s short and told with as much humor as the material will allow (which isn’t much, but there is a sort of biting dry humor here). Biographies of Douglass are available all over the net, and the entire narrative is also available in multiple digital formats.

I was really struck by the unapologetic attack Douglass aims at religion in America: not just the churches that openly condoned slaveholding, but the northern Christian churches that failed to excommunicate slaveholders, or who continued to align themselves with churches in the south. I think most editions of the narrative include the appendix in which Douglass clarifies his condemnation of religion:

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest, possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families,– sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers, leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other–devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.

Strong words, and he doesn’t really limit them to churches in the south in spite of his caveat at the beginning:

Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a sheep-stealer ; and at the same time they hug to their communion a man-stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with them for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors.

Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean, by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. It is against religion, as presented by these bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify.

I don’t think we have any current crime on our collective conscience that rivals the crime of slavery in U.S. history, but even if we did, there are very few public figures in America today who would be bold enough to levy such wholesale charges against religion or even religious institutions. We no longer speak freely when it comes to religion in this country.

The Sound and the Fury. The Faulkner duo has been selected as the next TUS book seminar, and since Amy and I will be pairing up to lead that one, I thought I’d better do a quick reread.

I’m not going to talk about this book over here just yet, but I do find it interesting that, as difficult as the Benjy and Quentin sections are if you have no idea what’s going on, on rereading they move very quickly and are not difficult at all. I reread the Benjy section in under an hour this time through. (I think this is my fourth time on this one.)

A Dark-Adapted Eye. This is my first Vine/Ruth Rendell book in a couple of years, and she’s not quite as good as I remembered. She’s still my favorite mystery writer by a long shot, but this book lacked the subtle characterization I had been giving her credit for in my memory. I enjoyed it a lot as an engaging mystery, though; it was nice and creepy with no tidy ending.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. I read this in high school but I had forgotten how good it is, how perfectly manner-of-factly Douglass tells his horrible story. And now I have another reason to hate the already hateable Jane Eyre: the latter was published two years after Narrative, and compared to what Douglass means when he refers to “my master,” Jane’s use of the same phrase is even creepier and more irritating. Plus, the racism in the depiction of the spoiler-in-the-attic is less justifiable. (Then again, I don’t know whether Douglass’s book was widely read in Europe at the time. But I hate Charlotte Brontë and I will take any excuse to hate her more.)

A Dark-Adapted Eye. I have read so many Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell mysteries that I was sure I’d read this one; Amazon tells me I purchased it in 1998, and I know I saw the television movie. But I am halfway through the book now and I’m sure I’ve never read it before. I can’t even remember how it ends or what the big secrets are.

I haven’t read any Ruth Rendell in a while and she’s not quite as good as I remember her. There are some rough spots, clichés, weird organizational jumps here that are a little jarring. Still, she’s by far my favorite mystery writer.

The Great Gatsby. I must have read this book a dozen times, but listening to the audiobook I still felt like I was picking up details I hadn’t noticed before. But perhaps I need to blame that on Tom Carson; thanks to him Daisy is now a heroin-addicted lesbian, and very, very tragic.

Lots going on right now. We’ve started early discussions of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, we’ve chosen our selections for June and July, and we’ve declared a book club hiatus starting in August while we look into some side projects. Among those: the Balzac reading group, which will vote next month for the book we want to read in August, plus an informal Graham Greene reading group.

We will finish Ulysses in mid June, so we are voting now for the next TUS seminar topic. Right now it’s a close race between The Sound and the Fury/Absalom, Absalom! and The Divine Comedy, probably mostly due to the fact that no one is up to tackling Gravity’s Rainbow so soon after Ulysses.

The Scarlet Letter. Lesley Ann Warren is the worst reader in the history of the English language. Wow. I said she needed more inflections, but I keep forgetting to be careful what I wish for, because by the end of the six-hour book she was emoting like Ophelia in a high school play. During the middle she occasionally sounded like she was reading Beatrix Potter to developmentally-disabled four-year-olds, with twee inflections and little giggles where she thought they might be appropriate.

Seriously, she’s terrible. I can’t believe this woman is an actress. I can’t believe she’s sufficiently literate to read a script. She stopped in the middle of sentences and then picked up again with the next word as if it were a brand new thought, and she didn’t just do that occasionally; she did it constantly. She mispronounced words (“centrifugal” is among the many words in The Scarlet Letter that were unfamiliar to Ms. Warren); it was clear from her reading that she had no idea what was going on with the plot. Except at the end, where she figured out that it was sad, so she went all out with the vocal tremors and the voice dying to a whisper. This was like a Saturday Night Live parody of a dramatic reading, and I can’t believe it got released. The worst audio book I’ve ever heard, by a long shot.

(Hawthorne? I love Hawthorne. I loved this book in high school, which marked me as a freak early on. Hawthorne can even withstand Lesley Ann Warren, although I understand he didn’t do so well against Demi Moore.)

The Scarlet Letter. The reader is not good. She is very, very precise in her enunciation, but she could be a computer for all the inflection she imparts. I don’t really like a lot of over-emoting in my audiobooks, but Lesley Ann Warren needs to take the stick out of her ass.

(You don’t come here for intellectual commentary or anything, do you?)

Jane Eyre. I hate Jane Eyre. Let’s get that out of the way right up front: I hate it. Until last year I could never get past the first section of this book no matter how many times it was assigned to me, and I’ve never made it through any other Charlotte Brontë work, either. I hate pretty much everything about this book: the smart-woman-foolish-choices central love story, the narrative structure, the first-person point of view so that we mostly only understand Jane through her version of other people’s opinions about her (which, I guess, is part of the point, but I don’t like it and I think it ultimately amounts to a character who isn’t really much of anything). I hate the preacher. I hate the spoiler-in-the-attic. I hate Mr. Rochester. I hate Jane’s stupid fits and her visions and all the crap about God. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

The best thing I can say about Jane Eyre is that I hate Wide Sargasso Sea even more. And both, damn it, are on my M.A. exam.

If you do not hate Jane Eyre and you are looking for an audio version, this is a very good one. Juliet Mills is an excellent reader and her voice is perfect for this selection. I certainly enjoyed hating Jane Eyre a lot more with this recording than I would have had I just reread it the old-fashioned way.

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break. Wow. I really loved this book, despite its imperfections. One of the best first novels I’ve read in a long time.

The Minotaur of the title is the actual Minotaur of mythology, except in this version he has cut a deal with Theseus, escaped the labyrinth, and stumbled into an immortal life among men. The book takes place more or less in the present, in a small town in the American south, where the Minotaur lives on the edges of human society and works as a line cook in a steak house.

Some of the reviews used phrases like “perversely comic” to describe the novel, but I didn’t find it to be comic either in intent or effect. For the most part, the novel is rather bleak and sad, although thank God it ends on a hopeful note; I’m telling you that because I was starting to feel a little suicidal for a while there. The Minotaur is beautifully drawn as a character, in terms of his physical as well as his metaphorical/mythical place in the book and the lives of the other characters. He is also goddamned heartbreaking, to the point where a few times I had to put the book aside for a few hours and go think about something else.

I love this type of story-telling, where freaks and monsters and superheroes and creatures from mythology are used to explore very human situations. At least, I love it when it’s done well, as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer at its best, or in Geek Love, another book I loved a lot. Minotaur reminded me a bit of both of those works, although in theme I suppose it’s closer to Angel than to Buffy, but I don’t want to compare anything I loved this much to Angel.

As I mentioned, the book has flaws. The author is a poet, which is very much apparent in the prose style and the short poems that break up a few of the chapters, but the diction is rough in a few places, enough to distract. He also employs a narrative technique that I find very annoying: all major and some minor events in the story are preceded by something along the lines of, “No one could have predicted or altered what happened next.” I believe this is intentional, as the story is overshadowed all along by a feeling of doom and portent, and the Minotaur’s status as a passive observer is one of the most important features of his character, but I found the device irritating. Sherrill should have trusted himself a bit more and opted for subtlety; he’s good enough that he didn’t need to be so obvious.

Those quibbles aside, I really loved the book, and I am very much looking forward to his next book, Visits from the Drowned Girl, which will be published in June.