Starting Anew (featuring 2013's Author-of-the-Year Announcement!)

"... I  am your beggar. I was the mendicant at the foot of the road from your castle. You have given me alms. But he who gives does not notice; he who receives examines and observes. When you say mendicant, you say spy. But as for me, though I am often sad, I try not to be a malicious spy. I used to hold out my hand; you only saw the hand, and you threw into it the charity I needed in the morning in order that I might not die in the evening. I have often been twenty-four hours without eating. Sometimes a penny is life. I owe you my life; I pay the debt."
- Tellmarch the Caimand (I.4.iv)

Ninety-Three Day Count: 50

Ninety-Three Page Count: 93

Hurdling Hugo Day Count: 293

Hurdling Hugo Page Count: 2296

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 You may have noticed that my posting on this site has become sporadic at best. Life has a funny way of taking up a lot of your time like that. Since my last post, I have finished Notre-Dame de Paris, begun Ninety-Three (regarded by many as Hugo’s best work), started the school year, and been cast in and performed in a community theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ve been busy.

But still… even when I do have time to post here, it often seems the last thing I want to do. Blogging seems a chore and I don’t want it to be that. I enjoy literature and discussing it with my friends and, honestly, that’s what I would like for this to be. I need to become excited again… which has told me I need to get a fresh start.

I want this not only to accurately reflect my literary journey (which I’m quickly beginning to realize will most likely take the rest of my life), but also to act as a way for others to begin their literary journeys. I have received word from several friends since I started this journey that they have become inspired by my tweeting or my blogging to begin literary journeys of their own. My grandmother has borrowed both War & Peace and Anna Karenina to read for her own enjoyment. My friend Sherri decided to devote a year to reading the works of William Shakespeare. Numerous friends have begun reading Les Miserables as a result of my commentary on it.

This has opened my eyes to the realization that people want to read good books. They want to experience these great stories in their original medium. In a world that is continually being overwrought with more and more visual media, there is something altogether timeless and enduring about the written word. Perhaps that is its power.

My desire, then, has become to broaden the scope of this blog, not simply to include my own thoughts, but those of other literary-minded people whose opinions on art and literature I greatly respect. The goal is almost to make this into a community of like-minded people with the desire to become more well-read, which, ultimately, is the goal I set out to achieve at the outset of this whole endeavor. Maybe it’s a pipe dream or a fool’s errand… I don’t know. Either way, that’s what I’m looking forward to most about this new direction – spurring others on toward literary independence and discovery.

With this change will come another new way of doing things. Gone will be the creative alliterations on the names of the authors I’m reading – Tackling Tolstoy, Hurdling Hugo, etc. – and they will be replaced by one ubiquitous title – The Classic Lit Blog. This will be the signature title of this blog as it will be associated with what I am calling The Classic Lit Project – a gradual attempt to become well-read by reading classic authors one year at a time. The mission statement, put as simply as I know how, is One Author, One Year. That’ll likely change over time, but for now, it seems a good starting point for me as I continue to figure out this new direction.

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Over the past two years, October has been my ‘announcement month’ – the month in which I put forward the author who will be the subject of the next year of reading. After much thought and deliberation, I’ve decided that I want to tackle what is largely considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century – Ulysses. As such, 2013 is set to become the year of James Joyce.

This will require changing a few things from the way I’ve approached literature previously. After conversations with an English teacher friend (whose comments on Joyce definitely helped to cement this decision for me), I feel like the best approach to Joyce would be to read his major works – Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses – in the order they were published. This, according to him, will accomplish two goals: (1.) It will allow me to witness firsthand the evolution of Joyce’s signature style over the course of his literary career, and (2.) it will help me to familiarize myself with characters that recur in Joyce's works in the order he established them.

My normal modus operandi, however, has typically been to start with the largest of an author’s work first and then work my way down. I did this with Tolstoy to some degree and with Hugo as well. With Joyce, however, I would be working my way up – from the smallest of his works, Dubliners, to the largest, Ulysses. My hope is that this will solve what I have come to call the “third book problem,” in which I become burned out and disinterested by the third novel. (I didn’t end up finishing the collection of short stories I’d chosen for Tolstoy last year and am currently struggling to become motivated to continue Ninety-Three.) By saving the novel I most want to read for last, my hope is that the momentum and desire to get there will carry me through to the finish.

As to Joyce’s most daunting work – Finnegan’s Wake – which is said to be the most challenging of anything he’s written… there is a part of me that does want to read it very much. A fine feather for my cap would be this seminal work of Joyce’s. However, a lot will depend on my feelings upon the completion of Ulysses, whether I feel I’m up for such a monumental read. I have heard that there is a wonderful audio edition of the book available, so I may find myself going that route (another first for me, as I typically don’t use audio books).

So, as you can see, there are some big changes coming to this concept in the next few months. For those of you still invested in Hugo, don’t bail quite yet. I’m not completely done here. There are still insights to be shared and comments to be made, so hold on. In the meantime, though, be excited about where this is all heading. I am.

First Reflections on NOTRE-DAME

"What [Quasimodo] loved above all else in the maternal building [the Cathedral of Notre-Dame], what awoke his soul to spread out the poor wings which it kept so miserably folded in its cavern, were the bells. He loved them, fondled them, talked to them, understood them. From the peal in the slender spire over the crossing to the great bell over the doorway, he was fond of them all. The spire over the crossing, the two towers were for him like three great cages in which the birds, trained by him, would sing for no one else. Yet it was these same bells which had made him deaf; but mothers often show most love for the child who has made them suffer most."

- Victor Hugo (IV.iii)

Notre-Dame Day Count: 14 

Notre-Dame Page Count: 244

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'Hurdling Hugo' Day Count: 196

'Hurdling Hugo' Page Count: 1707

 Two weeks into my reading of Notre-Dame de Paris and I am almost (but not quite) halfway through! Below are some thoughts on my reading of the text so far:

• One of the major complaints I've read online about Notre-Dame (or, the unabridged version at least) is that the first 300 pages are meandering and laid out very much like a chess game - each chapter is one particular move on the board leading up to Hugo's "endgame" or somesuch. I couldn't disagree more. Maybe it's because I've just finished reading Les Miserables, but I do not find Hugo's structure here to be nearly as meandering as it was in that text. Perhaps it's the fact that I've been reading authors like Hugo and Tolstoy for the past year and a half, but that long-winded sort of narrative doesn't really bother or frighten me anymore. To be honest, if an author goes into a large degree of detail, my immediate assumption is that he is going to be showing me something later to which these details will pertain. All that having been said, with only 56 pages remaining of those first 300, I have been enjoying the ride on Notre-Dame de Paris immensely! (In fact, it seems rather more concise than Les Mis in many ways!)
  
• Here's a quote from Hugo's archdeacon of Notre-Dame, Claude Frollo:
  
  

  "And I have studied medicine, astrology, and hermetics. Here alone [in alchemy] lies truth... here alone is light! Hippocrates, a dream, Urania, a dream, Hermes, an idea. Gold is the sun, to make gold is to be God. That is the only science. I have probed into medicine and astrology, I tell you! Nothing, nothing."

  
  I include this quote in order to say this: Claude Frollo is the Tom Cruise of 1482.
  
• Is it just me or does every adaptation of this novel seem to blatantly ignore the fact that Quasimodo is deaf? (I think the 1923 Lon Chaney version included it, but I know the 1939 Charles Laughton version and the 1996 Disney version summarily ignored this [rather important] bit of information.)

Forward Momentum, Albeit Not Without Trepidation

"A novel... is born, necessarily as it were, with all its chapters; a drama is born with all its scenes."

- Victor Hugo (in his introductory note to the Definitive Edition to Notre-Dame de Paris)

Day Count: 181

Page Count:  1463

As I prepare to begin what I will, for lack of a better term, call the second leg of my journey through the works of Victor Hugo, I find myself filled with the same sort of anxiety I felt a little over a year ago as I prepared to read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

I feel like "anxiety" is the right word, because it certainly captures the equal parts of excitement and trepidation I'm experiencing with regard to reading another great classic by another renowned author. This is especially increased due to the fact that I enjoyed Les Miserables to the extent that I did; I feel as though no matter how good Notre-Dame de Paris* is, it won't be nearly as incredible as Les Mis.

I suppose I'm not without precedent on this particular issue, seeing as how I had a similar, if not equal, situation last year. Don't get me wrong - Anna Karenina was a great book and I very much enjoyed the reading of it, but... War and Peace was (and, honestly speaking, still is) one of the best reading experiences of my life and I have yet to read something that comes close to its brilliance in my mind. Compared to a novel that wonderful, Anna K - though wonderful and compelling - fell a bit flat.

There is, of course, a very apropos response to this way of thinking, which is essentially that each novel cannot be compared to another, but must be read and appreciated on its own merits. This is a very good point, and worthy of consideration, but I can't help but feel as though it is, on some level, an exercise in futility. I feel like the nature of my exercise - reading the essential works of Victor Hugo in 2012 - renders such an objective appreciation impossible.

Allow me to explain. When I set out at the beginning of last year to read the essential works of Leo Tolstoy (a task at which I feel I was marginally successful), that goal had within it an implied amount of comparison built in. I'm not reading each of these books in a vacuum, but instead within the context of other books by the same author! It stands to reason that if I'm reading the works of Hugo for no other reason than to read the works of Hugo, there will be some comparison between the books.

I feel as though this comparison was especially apt last year in my study of Tolstoy, with both War and Peace and Anna Karenina being regarded as one of the best novels ever written. I felt like my comparison was not only encouraged, but mandated - as though it were my job as a thinking literary person to come up with an answer to the eternal question of which I preferred (a question I feel I have more than adequately answered to this point).

So, I suppose the question I'm posing to you, my conspicuously-absent-and/or-silent-of-late readership, is this: is comparison the prerogative of the reader/scholar or is it his/her own hubris that he/she asserts over the text being read? (Believe it or not, this is not a rhetorical question - I actually would like feedback. Please consider commenting on this post with your own thoughts.)

That having been said, I feel as though I'm taking some steps to keep myself mentally engaged in preparation for my next classic. Part of that was reading the Hunger Games series (as discussed in my last post), but those were read relatively quickly and provided little in the way of mental stimulation (leastways in the ways that Les Miserables did).

No, to keep my mental faculties engaged, I have turned to one of the greatest authors in the English language - William Shakespeare! There are upcoming auditions with a local community theatre group for an outdoor production of Shakespeare's immortal A Midsummer Night's Dream and I have decided that I want to go out for the show! Having never performed any Shakespeare before (outside of high school English and college-level Acting classes, that is), I figured I needed to get some advice. To that end, I dug up a copy of Barry Edelstein's Thinking Shakespeare, which I picked up on a whim at a Half Price Books a couple of years back. I've found the book extraordinarily helpful for an actor, filled with very practical, and at the same time, thought-provoking advice regarding the performance of the Bard.

Then, yesterday, on something of a whim, I read A Midsummer Night's Dream for the first time in... well, maybe ever. Certainly, I had read excerpts from the play over the years, but having never needed to study it in either high school or college, I cannot think of a time when I've needed to read it... so, I never have. (Don't worry. Sometime in the next decade, I am planning to devote a year of study to Shakespeare, at which point, I would like to read all of his plays in their entirety.) It was deceptively easy to read - especially after having read the first several chapters of Thinking Shakespeare.

Auditions are still two weeks away, but I can't help but get a bit giddy about the prospects of performing Shakespeare for the first time! Here's hoping I do well!

I'm more or less finished with this post, but I want to leave you with a story that totally happened while I was writing this post. Being without Internet access at home, I often find myself seeking Wi-Fi hotspots when the need to update my blog roll around. About half the time (maybe more), I end up at the Panera Bread down the street from my apartment as the food there is always tasty and the atmosphere is conducive to reading, study, and reflection (especially when you happen to be pumping Brandi Carlile through your earbuds). At any rate, knowing I was planning to update my blog today, I brought along my copy of Notre-Dame de Paris as well as Thinking Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

As I sat quietly typing away at my blog, a woman approached my table (completely innocently - I'm seated by both a trashcan and the front door, which is, admittedly, not the best of seating arrangements for a 100+-degree day, but allows for many people to walk by my location) and pointed to my stack of books.

"Are you reading it or teaching it?" she asked.

"Uh... neither," I answered. "I'm auditioning for Midsummer next month, so I have these two," I here indicated A Midsummer Night's Dream and Thinking Shakespeare, "and I'm getting ready to read this one [Notre-Dame de Paris] for my own amusement."

"Wow," she said. "That's pretty ambitious!"

"Well, I just finished Les Miserables earlier this month," I responded.

"I could not read Hugo for my own amusement," she said as she walked out the door, "but I can read Shakespeare!"

I suppose I could comment further on this story (or you could), but I feel the need to let it speak for itself. At any rate, I feel like reading great books is the ultimate conversation starter!

Until next time...!

* For the record, I am refusing to call this novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, which is, admittedly, its more popular name. I am doing this for two reasons: (1.) Notre-Dame de Paris is the intended name for the novel, the one that Victor Hugo gave it when it was first published in 1831. In French, this translates to, literally, Notre Dame of Paris and, roughly, Our Lady of Notre Dame. The Hunchback is, of course, a reference to the book's 'protagonist,' Quasimodo. Still to call the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is, I feel, to do a great disservice to the cathedral itself, which I am told becomes something of the central figure of the novel. (2.) The edition of the text that I am using (the aforementioned Alban Krailsheimer translation) is not entitled The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, but is, in fact, called Notre-Dame de Paris (potentially for any number of the reasons I listed above).