Mrs. Crawford
Book Choices—to start 2/2
--Use of/ Importance of Language:
God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
a semi-autobiographical, politically charged novel by Indian author Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of a pair of fraternal twins who become victims of circumstance. The book is a description of how the small things in life build up, translate into people's behavior and affect their lives.
'Language is a very reflexive thing for me. I don't know the rules, so I don't know if I've broken them!'
Arundhati Roy determines the limits herself, which has the consequence that many stylistic devices are used to concoct her special poetic writing.
Here are some examples:
A very striking aspect is the special structure of the novel which is based on the rotation between past and present. You can compare the novel with a puzzle, because you get piece by piece of information.
Example: To a scene which deals with the meeting of the 25-year-old twinsEstha andRahel follows a scene that takes place in the time of their childhood.
Another peculiarity is the usage of capital letters mid-sentence, which she uses to underline a special feeling or situation that is of big importance for the following plot.
Example: Estha's Other hand
=> In this case the capital letter isa new namefor the part of Estha's body that he completely disconnects from his physical self-awareness, because he can not bear to identify with the deed "the Other hand" has done. After this traumatic experience he does not want to deploy this hand, because he feels so dirty.
In this scene you can discover another aspect, which shows the feelings of Estha well and underlines how the things that happen affect him. This is not the only scene, which includes this aspect. Itis the take-over of the perspectives of different characters.
The parallel here is in the made up words and phrases and the creative structures of the novels.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores the issues of religion and spirituality from an early age and survives 227 days shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean.
The parallel here is the gray area between real life and language.
--An embrace or refutation of pop culture
Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
Review below by CARYN JAMES (New York Times)
'The Broom of the System'' is an enormous surprise, emerging straight from the excessive tradition of Stanley Elkin's ''Franchiser,'' Thomas Pynchon's ''V,'' John Irving''s ''World According to Garp.'' As in those novels, the charm and flaws of David Foster Wallace's book are due to its exuberance - cartoonish characters, stories within stories, impossible coincidences, a hip but true fondness for pop culture and above all the spirit of playfulness that has slipped away from so much recent fiction.
The Broom of the System deals with a ridiculously dysfunctional family, focusing on one member -- in this case, Lenore Beadsman. Lenore, heiress to the Stonecipheco baby food fortune, works as a switchboard operator for the laughably unprofitable publishing house of Frequent and Vigorous in Cleveland, Ohio. She's estranged from her father, rarely sees her odd assortment of siblings, and her mother has been institutionalized for years. The only family member she's remotely close to is her great-grandmother and namesake Lenore, and she (Lenore Sr.) has gone missing from her nursing home, along with twenty- five other residents and a few staff members. The whole disappearance is ominously connected to a pineal additive Stonecipheco is developing. Her (Lenore Jr.'s) father cajoles her into searching for Lenore (Sr.), who has apparently absconded with the research materials.
In between therapy sessions with her hygiene-fixated psychologist, an affair with her highly possessive and minisculely endowed boss Rick Vigorous, and run-ins with a televagelist who covets her scripture- quoting cockatiel, Lenore will encounter obese consumption-minded moguls and lifesized inflatable dolls in a quest that ranges from the skyscraper shadows of the Cleveland streets to the quiet campus greens of Amherst to the black sands and transplanted cacti of the Great Ohio Desert. Like Infinite Jest, The Broom of the System leaves the central mystery ultimately unsolved. The ostensible story question -- "Will Lenore (Sr.) be found?" -- acts not as a skeleton upon which to drape a plot, but as an excuse for peeping into the windows of the characters' lives and selves. There are enough laugh-out-loud moments to more than justify the number of literary conventions flouted.
--A satire of totalitarianism
1984 by George Orwell
An English dystopian novel by George Orwell, written in 1948 and published in 1949. It is the story of the life of the intellectual Winston Smith, his job in the Ministry of Truth, and his degradation by the totalitarian government of Oceania, the country in which he lives. It has been translated into sixty-two languages, and has deeply impressed itself in the English language. Nineteen Eighty-Four, its terms and language, and its author are bywords in discussions of personal privacy and state security. The adjective "Orwellian" describes actions and organizations characteristic of Oceania, the totalitarian society depicted in the novel, and the phrase "Big Brother is watching you" refers to invasive surveillance.
Brave New World by Alduous Huxley
A novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1932. Set in London in 2540 AD, the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, biological engineering, and sleep-learning that combine to change society. Huxley answers this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962), both summarized below.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A dystopiansoft science fictionnovel, was published in 1953. It first appeared as the novella, The Fireman, in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society, written in the early years of the Cold War. The novel presents a future in which all books are restricted, individuals are anti-social and hedonistic, and critical thought is suppressed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "book burner"). The number "451" refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which a book or paper spontaneously combusts.
Jennifer Government by Max Barry.
Published in 2003, it is Barry's second novel, following 1999's Syrup. The novel is set in a dystopianalternate reality in which most nations (now controlled by the United States) are dominated by for-profit corporate entities while the Government's[1] power is extremely limited. It is similar in satiric intent to George Orwell's 1984, but criticizes the concept of a government with too little power, rather than one with too much. Because of this, some readers see the novel as a criticism of libertarianism. Many readers also see it as a criticism of globalization, although Barry claims he is not an anti-globalizationist.