Wednesday, July 24, 2013

And I'm back!

So, my eye problem has not quite resolved itself, but I think I can get by and type something up. So...yay!

Finishing my review on Middlemarch... (Yeah, I realize I'm a couple centuries late.)

Read it. Yeah. That's my review. I think a lot of people in this day and age believe that reading for pleasure is meant to be easy. They believe, for some weird reason, that reading should be a passive activity; it shouldn't be taxing, or require any sort of cognitive recognition. I know people who put down a book if they find themselves looking words up in the Dictionary. Someone I know said this: It is good to increase your knowledge, but reading for pleasure should be just that--pleasure.

Frankly put, that is bullshit. And anyone who thinks this is wrong. Sorry, but you are. And it's attitudes like that that lead to novels like Fifty Shades of Grey or all of these insipid Jane Austen knock-offs. Or full grown adults reading young adult novels without any sense of, well, slumming it. If the words "Oh my God, Hunger Games is the best book I've read in ages," come out of the mouth of anyone over the age of perhaps sixteen, you might want to scale it up a bit.

Seriously. Adults have great literature. Try it some time.

The Hunger Games is very entertaining. But it's fluff. Sheer, cotton candy fluff. And I think it's totally OK to read like that sometimes. But to say that reading for pleasure should be a thing of intellectual passivity is, in my opinion, completely irresponsible. Reading shouldn't always be easy, and the idea that learning takes the pleasure out of something is just nonsensical.

Middlemarch is not really a novel full of words you won't understand. English hasn't changed that much in the last couple of hundred years, so unless your vocabulary is particularly poor the problem with reading this novel won't be with the language. It is, rather, written in a grammatical style largely unfamiliar to us (well, not unfamiliar as we've all read novels from that period, even if only for school) and perhaps a verbose for our tastes. It seems almost dispassionate to us because of different ideas of propriety; even sex scenes (which exist...see Fanny Hill for an example) were, in our estimation, not particularly titillating. For the time, of course...well, that's a different thing entirely.

In the future, we'll be thought of as prudes. I can almost guarantee it. Especially Americans.

But Middlemarch is, despite the general differences in sensibility, a very easy novel to understand and empathize with. It's a novel of characters instead of plot, and the town of Middlemarch is as much a character as anyone else. People's pasts come to haunt them, people make bad marriages, prove themselves worthy of the person they love, and discuss the politics of the day. In fact, you can learn a very nice history lesson if you look up the Reform Act or the Catholic Question. Looking up Wellington and Peel and Grey will provide you not only with an education, but give you a historical and political foundation absolutely necessary to understanding this novel.

You can ignore it, of course, but I don't recommend that. I recommend getting an idea of the politics because it'll make reading the book that much easier for you.

Dorothea starts out as a character you almost want to shake, but she ends up being a character you root for in every way. She makes the romantic choice and you cheer for her because we are a romantic people. And perhaps you don't understand why making that decision is so difficult, or why so many people would have a problem with it (or you understand, but cannot sympathize with because of our modern sensibilities), but you understand her decision and that's what matters. She is kind and giving and thinks only of the betterment of others, and you want her to be happy. And ultimately, George Eliot (a woman, remember, and not a dude and yes it matters) gives the reader what they want.

It is a novel of characters, as I said, and all of the characters evoke feelings. You hate the ones you're meant to hate, like the ones you're meant to like, and feel a strange sympathy for the characters for whom you are meant to feel a strange sympathy. Eliot makes the reader feel what she wants them to feel, and that is the hallmark of a wonderful writer. This is a true slice of life novel. You really come to understand what life in a small English village in the early 19th century is actually like. There are no murders or explosions or alien invasions or destructive wars or explosions (it had to be said again). It isn't Hollywood fodder, unless you're a big fan of Austen or Bronte movies (forgive the lack of umlaut, please, my laptop doesn't let me type it) already.

If you are...read it. READ IT.

READ THE DAMN NOVEL!

(You might need a Dictionary. Sorry if that means it's not a fun read.)

I have a lot of opinions. Sorry. (No, I'm not.)

Next time, a review of Abigail Gibbs' The Dark Heroine, which I picked up upon hearing the story of its publication and don't like perhaps as much as I was told I should...

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