Revulsion / Impression / Discussion

--This post is Day 1 in "The 7 Last Days of Winter"--

Revulsion:

The subject matter is revolting. I have a high gore-ratio, and am normally quite unimpressed by violence. When my peers are cringing, grasping to blankets, and covering their eyes in movies, I am usually sitting there considering whether I want to fall asleep then or later (I try to watch most of my movies with people who are the exceptions to this rule). This book had my stomach coiling. I already knew what it was about, but that obviously didn't make any difference. His simple, straightforward, beautiful--and it was beautiful--prose had me wishing I hadn't eaten such a large meal. I was entranced by how I was sickened at his beautiful words. I couldn't stop reading--even though, when I did stop, I wished I had stopped sooner. Please don't take this to think that I regret reading this book. I don't. I might read it again (10 years from now,) but it wasn't easy to read.

Impression:

The reason people have read this book for the last 60 years, and the reason people will continue to read it, is that it leaves a powerful impression on the reader. Even talking to a friend after reading, I had noticed some of the same things she had noticed, she had thought some of the same things I had thought, and we both looked to Nafisi (I have to re-read her) for some insight.

This book will continue to be around for many more years because when you shut the book, its impression (and please, please, please, note that I did not say "message") stays with you. Not the plot details--although they are there, and not the morality--although it bears thinking about, but the impression of you and that book, you and your mind, you and your body, and you and that book will remain. And, strangely enough, you'll want it to.

Discussion:

This could be the longest section, but I'm not interested in discussing this book with people who haven't read it. There are lots of thoughts and questions that are worth discussing. Next time I read it, I'm going to buy my own copy, and write all through it. I'll also probably journal my way through it. But, so you have a few ideas about what questions are usually raised, and so you read some of this amazing author, I have some quotes from his letter to the reader at the end of the book:

"Teachers of Literature are apt to think up such problems as "What is the author's purpose?" or still worse "What is the guy trying to say?" Now, I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no other purpose than to get rid of that book . . ."

"I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and despite (man who writes the foreward)'s assertion, this book has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster . . . "

"It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class or about the author."

"My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English . . ."

He says a lot more, and as you can see, I let most of his statements trail off (only because I'm worried about spoiling it for you, dear reader), but these probably give you a suitable impression of the author (I'm into my second of his books--it's phenomenal).

I highly recommend this book.