Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Do you know why I like modern literature? Because starting to read a book you can never know what to expect. This book, for example. It`s written by Iris Murdoch - the same Iris Murdoch that wrote "The Black prince" - a truly outstanding novel about a mentally sick guy. And what is this novel? It`s the story of love polygons. The main hero is happy with his wife and his lover Georgie until his wife Antonia informs that she`s gonna leave him because of his shrink Palmer. But it`s only the beginning of the love problems. There`s also the heroes` brother Alexander who takes every woman away from him, including his wife. But Palmer has incest with his own sister Gonoria. And the hero also has lust for that sister. Not to use too many words - everybody screws everybody else (except that there are no homosexuals, if we count out the heroes two secretaries). In the form the novel is interesting, it`s easy to read, but talking about the essence - there hardly is any.

Igor Guberman is a Russian-Jewish writer of something that you would call poems if you had a higher respect for the guy. This book here at least doesn`t consist only of poetry since I`m no fan of any form of poetry I don`t really like this kind of stuff. But what this book provides is funny stories from Gubermans own life. Some of them may not be true, but the author in the preface mentions that while other people drink to forget he drinks to remember something that he never knew. The first part of the book about Gubermans life is really entertaining, if I don`t count that he sometimes tries to show how much he knows about sex. But the second part where he starts quite seriously discussing the problems of this world that seem to bother him, starts praising people he likes and putting down the ones he dislikes, the whole moralising thing goes down the drain. I don`t need a comedian to tell me serious stuff, he`s not that good at that, apart from spoiling the experience of this book it does nothing anyway.

Do you believe that people are vain indeed or do they just pretend to be? On the trip through the most classical works of English literature we make our stop at the great novel "Vanity Fair", which the author himself called "novel without a hero". Is it true that there isn`t a hero? In the sense of a central male figure - yes, it is true, there isn`t a man whom you would call a hero, especially judging them by their behaviour - there`s Joseph Sedley - a naive and not particulary smart coward, there George Osbourne - a rich guy who doesn`t really know what to do about his own life and there`s William Dobbin who`s at least smart but who acts like a fool in love. And about the female stars - Becky Sharp who marries a possible heir of big bucks is an interesting character that`s able to use her female powers to gain control over men. But she`s considered to be the bad person, while Amelia Sedley - a whiny silly chick that loves her one and only George despite him being such a fool, is thought to be the true positive heroess a novel needs. Disgusting! And the novel is extremely long - there are many characters, every single one of them does lots of things (except for Amelia that keeps on crying the whole time thus making me want her death). The only reason to read this is to improve the overall level of education, but if you want to read an interesting it`s not the best choice. Oh, I forgot - the idea about the "vanity fair" of high society life is a good one, and the last sentence about the puppets being put back in their boxes is also good.

I don`t usually like reading essays. I`m not an intellectual person to that level, but for Milan Kundera I can make an exception. In this work he discusses the problems of misunderstanding that various geniuses have faced. The central person among those geniuses is Franz Kafka, who asked his best friend to burn his all works after his death but not only Kafkas unfinished novels were published, which is a good thing, but also every word he had ever written without even thinking that it could be of some value as a finished piece. But Kafka isn`t the only hero of this essay, there`s a Czech composes Janachek who wrote operas in prose and whos works were usually edited at the perfrormances, there`s Hemminguay who is put into cliches by various critiques, there`s Stravinsky who recorded most of his works himself being the conductor fearing that otherwise his legacy would have been made fun of. It`s a subject that Kundera has already discussed in his literary works - for example in the novel "Immortality" and in the story "Old decedents must give their place to new decedents". What I got from the book was the interest for Kafkas other two novels apart from "The process" which are discussed quite throughout in this essay, and for the already mentioned Janachek. And if anybody shall say that it means nothing he doesn`t know what he`s saying.

School of rock? No, school of English and English literature. Sylvia Barret is a young teacher that has taken a job at a normal American highschool. Everything would be great, if the school had turned out just as she thought it would. First, the students were of different ages - some of them were still children, while the others were older than she herself. Then were were the problems of discipline and of the poor state of the school. Sylvia tried to do her best - to make the young people read, to understand that she`s not the enemy. And with some students it actually worked, not with all of them, of course. There was this guy Jose Rodrigez whom nobody cared for, there was Lou Martin - a prankster who was very unhappy most of the time, then there was E.Williams who complained all the time that he was being discriminated because he was black. And there was Joe Ferrone - her favourite student who fell in love with her, because she tried to understand him, no matter how low his marks may have been. The book is organised in quite a remarkable manner - consisting from letters, notes dropped in a box, essays by students etc. A positive experience in reading, quite good ideas in terms of education, some comic episodes.

This here is a higly contraversial Russian play. Some people claim it to be a piece of trash that one will never remember about except for its dirty scenes, while others compare it to the best works of modern and classical literature. What`s my judgement? I`d like to tell that the truth lies in between, but it`s not the case. What does this play tell us? There`s a 14-year old boy who makes some things out of plasticine, for example, a huge penis. He has a hard time at school because of his smoking and because of him being an orphan living with his grandmother. He has a friend who pretends that he get laid all the time but that is not true, of course. Almost everyone in the play uses a rude language. And perversion is on every corner. At the very beginning there`s a coffin with a child in a room which the main hero enters, and an elderly woman starts slinging him for coming too close to her in order trying to rub his dinky against her. And later he and his friend are raped by two drunk men. Yeah, and in the end the main hero is also killed by one of them. Great? I don`t think so. The only parallel I can find for this play is "400 blows" by F.Truffaud (that`s a film actually but who cares) only this play here has nothing to offer except for a child touching a womans womb and the hurt of a penis entering his anus. I guess, "this ain`t no technological breakdown, oh no, this is the road to hell".

You gotta be crazy even calling this thing to be short stories. These aren`t even stories - simply some works that Kafka had started to write but never managed to complete. Some of them are but a few sentences long, and don`t show no sign of Kafkas genius, just like you could expect such stories to be. One of the longest stories which seems to be at least something has even a fragment that says "a few pages missing" and that isn`t a joke from Kafka, simply the texts are missing. Great! Then why don`t I rate these stories lower than Britney Spears rates Michael Boltons imaginary stepbrother Ricky? Because there`s one story that lives up to Kafkas fame and is interesting to read, partly even hilarious and absolutely unconventional. It`s about some school teacher who claims to have discovered a gigantic mole, and about another guy trying to drag the worlds attention towards the discoverer of this phenomena. Of course, nobody ever cares about this mole thing, but at least those two guys start a conflict because they have different opinions towards the mole that even they themselves don`t try to catch or to prove seriously its existence. You can read this one story but the rest isn`t worth even looking at it. That guy whom Kafka asked to burn his works would have done a good job if he had burned those stupid unfinished stories.

With this we end our introduction into the mysterious world of Franz Kafka. K. is a land surveyor that was asked to work in a castle. Because of some strange reasons he isn`t let into the territory of the castle, for there`s burrecracy surrounding it. And you can`t even be sure that K. really is a surveyor, for there`s no proof in the book that he is indeed planning to get on with his work and his whole purpose seems kinda strange. A woman named Frieda who was the lover of an important clerk changes the clerk for K. But it only leads to bigger problems for K., who doesn`t really know what he wants, if there even is such a thing. He sinks lower and lower in the society around the castle, but it doesn`t really bother him, all he wants is to talk to some highly positioned clerks, but he doesn`t have much success at that. He has a strange friend who`s family is treated like unhuman in the village for the guys sister refused to go and become a fuck buddy for some important guy. And in the end nothing comes out of all K. troubles, everything ends like nothing had ever started. The book is similar to the "Process" and not definetely worse than the most highly acclaimed Kafkas novel.

Do you know why Kafka is considered to be so cool? Because he never finished a novel. And despite that there are three novels of his that are put on the golden shelf of the 20th century literature. And America is one of those novels. It certainly lacks an ending but it`s not really that clear - did Mr. Kafka indeed plan ever to write one? We get to hear the story of a young boy Carl going to the States after he has impregnated a servant of his parents. Actually I chose the wrong word - she was rather impregnated through him, `cos the boy had no interest in her and she used him as a living dildo or something like that. Anyhow he met his uncle in the States who was a rich and influential fellow (and not an evil uncle, who would have predicted that!) but because of a silly misunderstanding he has to leave his uncle and start a life of his own. He teams up with two tramps - an Irishman and a French guy. He finds a job at the hotel as the elevator boy, but because of his so called friends whom he was trying to escape he has to leave the job and become a servant for a crazy fat singer that earns her money by sex. In the end Carl joins a strange theatre and goes on a train to start his work, but that`s where the story ends. And I don`t mind that, because it`s how life goes - could you really make a complete story about your life that would end with your death?

Welcome to the fantastic world of uninteresting literature. Our todays exhibit is a story (or rather a novel) by Christa Wolf - one of the most important writers of East Germany. This is a story about unhappy love of a young woman whose lover leaves the country for the West. Rita is a most typical person a socialist writer could choose for his/her hero - she`s young, ideallistic and she works on the railroad - sweet isn`t it. In the very beginning she has an accident at work and has to go to the hospital. Only later we learn to know that it was because of Manfred - a chemist who left the socialist Germany and wanted her to go with him but after a brief stay Rita returned back to the East. Of course, the book has its share of descriptions how the trains are made, what people work there - everything you could expect from a book like this. There`s also another man who loves Rita, but she doesn`t care for him. Manfred didn`t leave the country btw. only because of his ideological problems but mainly because his new design for some stupid thripe was not accepted - you know what it`s like when the old can`t accept what the young have to offer. To be frank I can say - this book is totally average, there are no high points in it and there are no lows. You read and you forget about. That`s it.