The Book Club

Quote Analysis: Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

Poem: The Road Not Taken

Book: Mountain Interval

Author: Robert Frost

Publisher: Henry Holt (1920)

Genre: Poetry

Character Speaking: Unknown Narrator

Analysis: If you follow my Twitter account (follow me here!), you know that on Friday I taught Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken in my Englist 111 (the basics of poetry, drama, and fiction) class. I was pumped to blow my students' minds by telling me that Frost's poem, often quoted by politicians and the like as a piece of inspirational dogma, might not be as hopeful as most people think it is.

Sadly, my students didn't know the poem in the first place, so the whole blowing their minds thing didn't happen. It made sad. Both because I didn't get to watch their faces as they made the connection and because that means they don't know one of the most famous twentieth century American poets.

But, back to the analysis: the last two lines above (the quoted portion is the poem's last stanza - you can view the whole thing here) have often been emblazoned on many high schools and other assorted places where inspiration is vital to continuing on in the midst of darkness. Unfortunately, if you read the first line of the last stanza, instead of just the last two lines, you get a whole other picture altogether.

With just the last two lines, taking the road less traveled has made all the difference - a seemingly positive idea. But adding to it the first line of the stanza's "I shall be telling this with a sigh", we get a whole other picture. We don't tell happy things with a sigh. We tell sad things with a sigh. At the most, we tell wistful things with a sigh.

In other words, taking the lesser worn road made all the difference - but not necessarily in a good way. There's nothing in the word to say that difference means better, which is the common misconception about this poem. Mostly, it's the now common "Making a difference" phrase that has helped to alter this poem's meaning, but in general, it's the lack of taking in the whole poem that really does it in.

Even in previous stanzas, there are hints that the lesser traveled road might not be the best place to be. One college classmate of mine even managed to make a case that our speaker is actually dead - the sigh being his last breath and the fact the speaker can never return again.

The lesson here? Never take just part of a poem (or just a piece of any narrative) and try to use it to create the whole picture. It's like taking just one scene from a movie and deciding what that movie's plot is. Imagine trying to figure out the entire plot by only watching the "I'll have what she's having" part in When Harry Met Sally or just seeing Twilight's birth scene. Works of arts are meant to be viewed as a whole, not in pieces.

Buy It Here!: The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged

Book Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Title: Never Let Me Go

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Publisher: Faber and Faber (2005)

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Science Fiction

Sub-Genres: Coming of Age, English boarding school, Meaning of Life, Morality Plays

Plot Summary: Kathy, a young woman in England, tells the reader the story of growing up at Hailsham, a seemingly normal boarding school, with her friends Ruth and Tommy. But there is a dark secret behind the art their guardians have them create and a life of hardship and pain that awaits them, for their lives have only one distinct and dark purpose.

What I Liked: Most of all, Kathy's voice is engaging and creepy, perfectly setting the tone for this book. While at times it slips into a book mode (as in, Ishiguro wanted to say something important here but it doesn't really fit Kathy that well), it's still Kathy's voice that remains the book's strongest feature.

I also thought that the interplay between Tommy, Ruth, and Kathy was engaging and thoughtful, if at times repetitive. The characters are decently formed (although Tommy and Ruth can be one-note when it serves the plot, as angry boy and angsty girl, respectively).

Overall, the book is emotionally engaging and poetically written.

What I Didn't Like: But damn, it does all fall apart when you start to think about the plot and the characters and what the world has done to these poor people. Basically, and I'm trying not to spoil things here, is that if the whole point is that Kathy and her friends are humans, too, why in the world do they not fight back against their given destiny? There's no reason even pondered in the book.

While Ishiguro isn't a science fiction writer, and it's obvious he's focused more on the telling of the story then the sci-fi aspects of it, when you go into a genre, you've got to respect that genre. The reader gets no explanation as to how this all happened, except for a long chapter right at the end, that really explains Hailsham and not much else. That chapter is totally supervillain explains everything in a boast for plot-sakes, by the way, and a deus ex machina for plot resolution.

Frankly, I don't get it. And while I can enjoy a literary wordsmith book with a little plot, there's plot here and it's simply not developed. It very much detracts from the story and also, in some way, signals that the story itself isn't important. Which it should be. This is why a lot of people don't read "high" fiction - because they want a story, not fancy words on a page. For me, you need both. And Never Let Me Go only has one.

 Similar Works: More Literary Science Fiction: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, and 1Q84by Haruki Murakami.

Other Ishiguro Works: The Remains of the Day, When We Were Orphans, and Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall.

Movie Adaptions: Never Let Me Go, starring Carey Mulligan (Kathy), Kiera Knightley (Ruth), and Andrew Garfield (Tommy).

Buy It Here!: Never Let Me Go

Last Thought: A pretty but ultimately weak science fiction attempt by a literary writer.

Quote Analysis: Umberto Eco's Baudolino

"If you want to to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things."

Book: Baudolino

Author: Umberto Eco

Translated from Italian by: William Weaver

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2002)

Genre: Literature

Sub-Genres: Fantasy, Frame Story, Hero's Quest, History, Metafiction, Middle Ages, Religious Studies, Unreliable Narrator

Character Speaking: Otto (being told by Baudolino)

Analysis: The thing I love about this quote is just how insanely meta it is.

On the one hand, the quote is spoken by Otto in a conversation with the title character Baudolino. Otto is, in fact, a historian himself, and Baudolino was his student. Baudolino relies this quote to Niketas, in the present, while telling Niketas his own history and life story, all the while admitting that he is a great liar. Otto, too, tells Baudolino, that he is a great liar.

In the end, the listener, Niketas, is so wrapped up in Baudolino's history that no one ends up hearing it again. It is just too fantastical, so that no one would ever believe it. The story ends with, "A greater liar than Baudolino will tell it." Since the book is essentially a frame of Niketas' flee from invaders, you can take the quote as Niketas being the greater storyteller or the author Eco himself.

In other words, this is perhaps Eco's own view on writing: the poets, classically considered the greatest writers, are the best liars. Fiction writers, in fact, are doing just that - they're taking something not true and making it real for the reader. Since the book deals with the fantastical, a large portion of this book could be a thesis on the subject of the willing suspension of disbelief, and how the writer uses that against the reader to make them believe in things like unicorns, vampires, and true love.

But the best part is that it also deals with the narratives inherent even in true things. Otto tells Baudolino that he must make the truth exciting to make a great history. Taken in the context of the modern age (the book was published in 2002), Eco is definitely pointing us towards things like the 24 hour news cycle, where the smallest thing can become a huge story, and the lies Hollywood stars tell us about their lives. Eco is trying to make us question just how much of "the truth" that we hear is actually reality, while pointing out that all stories, especially the good ones, are inherently untrue.

Buy It Here!: Baudolino

PFS Book Review: Umberto Eco's Baudolino

Great Quotes: Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

 

"One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Great Quotes: Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone

 

 

"I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed — or worse, expelled."

Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Written by JK Rowling

 

Great Quotes: Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories

 

 

"I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ('I am not my own subject,' I used to say with icy superiority)."

From the Preface to Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories

Book Review: Umberto Eco's Baudolino

Title: Baudolino

Author: Umberto Eco

Translated from Italian by: William Weaver

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2002)

Genre: Literature

Sub-Genres: Fantasy, Frame Story, Hero's Quest, History, Metafiction, Middle Ages, Religious Studies, Unreliable Narrator

Plot Summary: During the Fourth Crusade, Constantinople is sacked and burned. A gentlemen and historian called Niketas is saved from the pillagers by a religious man called Baudolino. Amazed by the man, Niketas agrees to hear Baudolino's life story, as Constantinople crumbles around them. Baudolino, though, admits to being a liar, but tells his story anyways. He begins as just a peasant boy but is adopted by the Emperor Frederick, leading him first to a scholarly life in Paris, then to war, and finally on a cross-world tale to find the Holy Grail and the Christian kingdom of Prester John somewhere in the far east. But along the way, murder, sabotage, and strange, magical beasts conspire to stop Baudolino from ever reaching his goal.

What I Liked: Eco manages to cram this book full of so many things: there's the a hero's quest for the Holy Grail (with the needed echoes of King Arthur's knights), several romances, metafiction with the most unreliable narrator I've ever seen, a continuous study of religion and how it effects people, allusions up the wazoo, and multiple languages weaving in and out of the text. It's amazing to see a master at his work and still have a plot and characters to speak of. Lesser writers wouldn't be able to manage it.

The story, filled with fantastical elements, is engaging, and Baudolino, our main character, is captivating, mostly because the reader is never quite sure when he's telling the truth. But my favorite parts are when Eco speaks about writing and storytelling, when he confesses the truths that all stories are lies but we tell them anyways. It's these insights into the nature of humanity that I enjoyed the most.

What I Didn't Like: With a frame story, especially one that continues to go back and forth, sometimes the plot itself can be jarring and events can be forgotten. Niketas himself is something of a cypher and unlikeable character, leading to a partially unsatifying but still somewhat predictable ending. I think the reader did deserve to know a little more about what was true and what was not. Should the reader doubt the entire tale or just the fantastical portions? It's an interesting question but one that the book doesn't make full use of.

There are also quite a number of background characters in Eco's novel, from Baudolino's hometown, his band of adventures, the people he knews within the empire, the people he meets on the journey, and those with him in the present. Let's be honest: that's far too many background characters. While most of them have a place in the story, few of them actually have any sort of personality or description to make them remotely memorable. And Eco doesn't always remind his readers who someone is when they show up again.

Similiar Works: Other PFS Book Club Reviews for Eco Works: On Literature

Other Eco Fiction: Foucault's Pendulum, The Name of the Rose, and The Island of the Day Before.

Other Books about Prester John: Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John by Lev Gumilev, Realm Of Prester John by Robert Silverberg, and The Habitation of the Blessedby Catherynne M. Valente.

Buy It Here!: Baudolino

Last Thought: An enjoyable book packed with more allusions and metatextual studies than I've ever seen and one that only falters in the smaller character moments.

First Line Analysis: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

Title: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

Authors: Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Publisher: Quirk Books (2009)

Genres: Horror, Humor, Literature, Romance

Sub-Genres: Jane Austen Adapation, Classics, Comedy of Errors, Mash-Ups, Regency Romance 

Character Speaking: Unnamed Narrator

Spoiler Alert!

Analysis: Now, this line is of course a twist on one of the most quoted opening lines of any book, ever (today's First Line Analysis was actually a toss up between the original and Kafka's Metamorphosis but I decided I couldn't handle all that thinking this morning).

Austen's original line read, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." It is considered one of the finest forms of irony ever written, for in fact, it is, of course, a truth universally acknowledged that a single, wealthy man wants nothing more than to screw his brains out. And this is compounded by the fact that when the original line was written, you couldn't ever actually talk about this sort of thing. Thus, Austen's original line is taking a swing straight at her entire society.

In Grahame-Smith's line, we get an entirely similiar but different set-up. Grahame-Smith sets up the book's humor by inverting the classic line with something that is instantly recognizable on two fronts: Austen's quote and the popular belief in zombies screaming "Brains!" and slowly shambling towards their chosen victims. By doing this, he's providing the book's entire tone - which is violent, a bit gross, with tones of humor (mostly ironic), and a cute play off of Austen's original work.

In a way, this is why this book is so smart. Grahame-Smith is twisting the same conventions that Austen used, the sense of funny irony that still delivers a gut punch. Austen wasn't funny without purpose, though, and provided a lot more insight into her culture than Grahame-Smith's zombies can. I do not, however, blame the zombies, as science fiction and fantasy can provide some great insights into the human condition that more literary work cannot (prejudice, especially racism, is actually amazingly covered by fantasy and sci-fi). Instead, I think it's more a facet of Grahame-Smith being a 21st century man, and Austen being a woman of her time.

Austen's job was to take apart her own world, which she seemed to do with zealous glee. Grahame-Smith's job was to entertain, plain and simple. And both succeeded. It is a testament to Grahame-Smith's skill, though, that I bought the book on the first line alone. I read it and knew it was going to be a fun adventure.

As a writer, it's that sort of first line that every book needs and so rarely gets: one that delivers the entire premise and theme of the book, wrapped in a moment that captures the readers' imagination. Insanely difficult to do, but Austen did it here with a line that still speaks to us generations later. All Grahame-Smith had to do was inject his own humor into the line to make a great parody. If that doesn't show the genius of the original line, I don't know what does. 

Buy It Here!: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

Great Quotes: Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil

 

"The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way."

 - From Charles Baudelaire's The Albatross from Les fleurs du mal

Translated from French by James McGowan