The Castle of Otranto

     
The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

So this book was considered scary at one point, I guess? People in the 1700's must have had wicked imaginations.

The Exorcist

      
The Exorcist
by William Peter Blatty
read: 2013

In The Crucible , characters are accused of witchcraft even though to a modern reader it's obvious there's no such thing. In The Exorcist, the characters assume there's no such thing even though it turns out Regan MacNeil really is possessed by a demon. Initially, the doctors are skeptical even of a psychological issue, preferring to focus on physical problems. Ultimately, a Catholic priest is called, but he too is a skeptic, struggling with his faith.

The theme that resonated me in the novel wasn't faith, however, but duty. Even though Damien isn't sure whether he believes in God, he takes his responsibilities seriously, barely sleeping, doing everything he can for Regan and Chris, pushing the church for an exorcism, and even helping the family cover up a crime. I was left with the impression that this sense of duty ultimately led to him finding his faith. At no point does he pray for guidance or the strength to do what he needs to do, but he receives it anyway. Ultimately, I think he realizes that.

The Crucible

     
The Crucible
by Arthur Miller
read: 2013

Rarely do I read something that actually makes me angry, but the injustices of The Crucible got my blood boiling as I was reading it. The events towards the end of the play were especially frustrating, as the individuals in charge already know (or have a good idea) that there's no witchcraft going on, but they demand a public confession and finger-pointing to validate the executions that have already happened. That's infuriating, but on the other hand I'm not sure there's much evidence it actually happened. Arthur Miller (by his own admission) plays fast-and-loose with historical truth in favor of a moral or emotional truth, but honestly I'm not sure he got there either.

House of the Seven Gables

    
House of the Seven Gables
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

Random thoughts that don't really have anything to do with each other:

Over the summer, I moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where Nathaniel Hawthorne is from. The House of Seven Gables is a prominent landmark, but there's scant reason to think it's the actual building Hawthorne was referring to in this book. In addition, Hawthorne had already moved to Western Massachusetts before writing House of the Seven Gables.

In television they have a concept of a "bottle episode," where all the action takes place on one set. House of the Seven Gables is almost a bottle novel, with virtually all the action taking place in the titular house. This also gives it almost a theater feel.

In The Crucible, Arthur Miller writes of the puritans who initially settled Salem, "These people had no ritual for the washing away of sins." This theme of original sin shows up generations later in this novel, as shown here in this description of Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon's character:

And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early and reckless youth, he had committed some one wrong act,--or that, even now, the inevitable force of circumstances should occasionally make him do one questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blameless ones,--would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the fair aspect of a lifetime? What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which were heaped into the other scale!

The main theme of the novel as described by Hawthorne in the introduction is about sins of the past being visited on present generations. This takes added weight when you realize that one of his ancestors was a judge who presided over the Salem Witch Trials. Perhaps Hawthorne himself feared paying the price for his great-great-grandfather's sins?

The Scarlet Letter

   
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
read: circa 1995
Guardian 1000 Novels

I think this was the first novel I had to read in sophomore high school English. I remember it was a couple years before the Demi Moore movie came out. That movie looked terrible.

Hawthorne was living in Salem, Massachusetts, where the Salem Witch Trial took place (and where I live now), while writing The Scarlet Letter. His great-grandfather was a judge in many of the trials. It's hard not to see a parallel between the injustices heaped on Hester Prynne and on the women accused of witchcraft.

The Child In Time

   
The Child In Time
by Ian McEwan
read: 2013
Guardian 1000 Novels

I became a father for the first time a little over a year ago. The Child In Time's protagonist sees his daughter abducted in the supermarket, and the novel deals with his struggles to cope with that tragedy. It was a tough read in a way that it wouldn't have been for me a couple years ago.

One of the themes in the book is the capriciousness of life and death. Aside from the kidnapped daughter, we see a traffic incident that narrowly avoids a fatality, a character commits suicide, and a baby is conceived. Life is fragile and death can arrive at any time. The titular "child in time" refers to a metaphysical encounter between the protagonist and his mother, where he appears to her as a small child while she is pregnant with him and contemplating an abortion. Without that miracle, would our hero have ever been born? McEwan sets up his incomprehensible loss in opposition to the improbability of existing in the first place.

Great book, well constructed, the prose is outstanding. As a dad though, it was painful at times.

The Rainbow

  
The Rainbow
by D.H. Lawrence
read: 2013
Modern Library #48, Guardian 1000 Novels

The Rainbow is a story that spans generations, and while I sometimes like that formula (as in Wuthering Heights and The Cairo Trilogy), here I had trouble pin-pointing a common thread uniting the generations of Brangwens. It was a tough read

One thing I did like was a running theme through the novel, particularly the first half, that the written word is limited in the emotional depth and resonance it posses. One example: "It bored her to write a letter to him. After all, writing words on paper had nothing do do with him or her." Later heroine Ursula, in describing her favorite and least favorite courses: "Most tedious was the close study of English literature. Why should one remember the things one read?" The characters judge written language as dull, shallow, and static. Contrast this with Lawrence's own prose:

So the Brangwens came and went without fear of necessity, working hard because of the life that was in them, not for want of the money. Neither were they thriftless. They were aware of the last halfpenny, and instinct made them not waste the peeling of their apple, for it would help to feed the cattle. But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, leaves the young-born on the earth. They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' nests no longer worth hiding. Their life and interrelations were such; feeling the pulse and body of the soil, that opened to their furrow for the grain, and became smooth and supple after their ploughing, and clung to their feet with a weight that pulled like desire, lying hard and unresponsive when the crops were to be shorn away. The young corn waved and was silken, and the lustre slid along the limbs of the men who saw it. They took the udder of the cows, the cows yielded milk and pulse against the hands of the men, the pulse of the blood of the teats of the cows beat into the pulse of the hands of the men. They mounted their horses, and held life between the grip of their knees, they harnessed their horses at the wagon, and, with hand on the bridle-rings, drew the heaving of the horses after their will.

This is one of the very first paragraphs in the novel. It's rich with sensual imagery, words like seed, intercourse, nakedness, supple, desire. Lawrence's characters decry the limits of the English language even while Lawrence himself is trying to transcend those limits.