"Months of boredom had subdued him to intoxication by an experience which, at another time, might itself have bored him." (60)
(1963. Oxford : ISIS Large Print, 1986)
Monday, April 23, 2007
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Reviews of this book place it as one of Spark's very best, but personally I found it dull and far less engaging than the other novels of hers I've read. Miss Brodie was not in any way a sympathetic character, and the girls were just your typical impressionable youthful pawns/guinea pigs. I was rather disgusted by the whole book, to be honest. Here is one of the few moments where I did enjoy reading this:
"Towards the end of the Easter holidays, to crown the sex-laden year, Jenny, out walking alone, was accosted by a man joyfully exposing himself beside the Water of Leith. He said, 'Come and look at this.'
'At what?' said Jenny, moving closer, thinking to herself he had picked up a fallen nestling from the ground or had discovered a strange plant. Having perceived the truth, she escaped unharmed and unpursued, though breathless, and was presently surrounded by solicitous, horrified relations and was coaxed to sip tea well sugared against the shock." (82)
(New York: Dell Publishing, 1961)
"Towards the end of the Easter holidays, to crown the sex-laden year, Jenny, out walking alone, was accosted by a man joyfully exposing himself beside the Water of Leith. He said, 'Come and look at this.'
'At what?' said Jenny, moving closer, thinking to herself he had picked up a fallen nestling from the ground or had discovered a strange plant. Having perceived the truth, she escaped unharmed and unpursued, though breathless, and was presently surrounded by solicitous, horrified relations and was coaxed to sip tea well sugared against the shock." (82)
(New York: Dell Publishing, 1961)
Sunday, April 8, 2007
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi
"There is no proportion between the pity we feel and the extent of the pain by which the pity is aroused: a single Anne Frank excites more emotion than the myriads who suffered as she did but whose image has remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is necessary that it can be so. If we had to and were able to suffer the sufferings of everyone, we could not live. Perhaps the dreadful gift of pity for the many is granted only to saints; to the Monatti, to the members of the Special Squad, and to all of us there remains in the best of cases only the sporadic pity addressed to the single individual, the Mitmensch, the co-man: the human being of flesh and blood standing before us, within the reach of our providentially myopic senses." (56)
(Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Vintage International, 1989)
(Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Vintage International, 1989)
Thursday, April 5, 2007
To Destroy You is No Loss: The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family by JoAn D. Criddle
"When we first arrived in Khum Speu village, men and boys had joined wholeheartedly in soccer matches after a hard day's work, but soon these games were prohibited. Players were told that if they had energy enough to play, then they had energy enough to work longer hours. Angka claimed that it was wrong to waste 'the water that comes from the skin' when it could be expended instead in productive labor. Sweat was to be spent in useful work, not decadent play." (63)
"Dissatisfied with our makeshift huts, people were anxious to qualify for better housing. Some even volunteered information about themselves to prove they belonged to the favored groups allowed to move. Over three million took part in this migration.
In the past, people had been suspicious of the calls for workers, since most men failed to return. We had concluded that such calls were often a ruse to permanently remove selected individuals. However, this new resettlement call for entire familes was viewed differently; it matched our expectations for a return to normality. Conditions had to be better in newly constructed villages, we'd reasoned. Perhaps families would be reunited with missing fathers and husbands after all. Tossed a crumb of hope, we built a feast of optimism.
Close friends and relatives, who did not want to be separated from each other, had timidly asked to be allowed to resettle with those who had been called to transfer. To our surprise, many had been allowed to leave. Most of us jumped to the conclusion that this new leniency must be a turning point toward a decrease in arbitrary rule.
[...] Told to leave bulky household possessions behind, since the new villages had everything provided, those who qualified had willingly lined up to board the waiting vehicles with only a few personal belongings.
Ox carts, trucks, and buses arrived on the appointed day in each village; the average-sized truck held about eighty people. Each vehicle filled rapidly and pulled out of village squares amid tears and cheering.
Typically, a few miles from the village, the vehicles stopped along a tree-lined road. Greeted by stirring music, blaring from loudspeakers, people eagerly piled out of the trucks and lined up to register. A handful of soldiers escorted the women and children, a few at a time, down the winding forest paths or through the abandoned rubber plantations. Hurrying behind the soldiers, excited villagers wondered aloud about their new village.
Upon arrival in the clearing, they hesitated, then tried to retreat. Before them gaped newly dug trenches, an abandoned reservoir, a well, or an old mine shaft. Horrified, villagers were ordered at gunpoint to line up. Their elbows were tied behind their backs with red cord and they were made to kneel along the open trench. Dumbfounded, most obeyed without complaint or struggle. Soldiers administered a quick blow to the back of the head or neck with a heavy wooden hoe or a machete. Each soldier was able to kill villagers at the rate of twenty to thirty per minute with little noise or wasted bullets. The red parachute cords were retrieved for future use.
After the women and children were dispatched, their husbands and fathers were ushered into the clearings. Seeing their massacred loved ones, their own will to live weakened. Most submitted in mute silence, kneeled, and were clubbed.
[...] During French colonial rule, hundred of exploratory mine shafts had been sunk in the plantations as men searched for gemstones. These old shafts were over one hundred feet deep; the bottom could not be seen from the upper edge. Truckload after truckload of victims was dumped into each shaft. When soldiers finished, the shafts, reservoirs, and wells of Cambodia were full." (144-146)
"When the mass graves were finally discovered, the justification given us by Angka for killing women and children was that anyone associated with a "guilty person" [the educated; anyone literate; skilled workers (plumbers, technicians, etc); old government officials; anyone who had lived and worked and been schooled in the cities, basically] was tainted.
Keang had information that eventually everyone over the age of twelve at the time of the takover was ultimately scheduled to be killed [...]. Then there would be left only pliable youth who did not remember the former way of life and had no training or ability to organize resistance against Angka and its plans for a 'perfect society'." (147)
(2nd Edition. Auke Bay: East/West Bridge, 1998)
A very succinct history of what happened: http://www.dithpran.org/killingfields.htm
"Dissatisfied with our makeshift huts, people were anxious to qualify for better housing. Some even volunteered information about themselves to prove they belonged to the favored groups allowed to move. Over three million took part in this migration.
In the past, people had been suspicious of the calls for workers, since most men failed to return. We had concluded that such calls were often a ruse to permanently remove selected individuals. However, this new resettlement call for entire familes was viewed differently; it matched our expectations for a return to normality. Conditions had to be better in newly constructed villages, we'd reasoned. Perhaps families would be reunited with missing fathers and husbands after all. Tossed a crumb of hope, we built a feast of optimism.
Close friends and relatives, who did not want to be separated from each other, had timidly asked to be allowed to resettle with those who had been called to transfer. To our surprise, many had been allowed to leave. Most of us jumped to the conclusion that this new leniency must be a turning point toward a decrease in arbitrary rule.
[...] Told to leave bulky household possessions behind, since the new villages had everything provided, those who qualified had willingly lined up to board the waiting vehicles with only a few personal belongings.
Ox carts, trucks, and buses arrived on the appointed day in each village; the average-sized truck held about eighty people. Each vehicle filled rapidly and pulled out of village squares amid tears and cheering.
Typically, a few miles from the village, the vehicles stopped along a tree-lined road. Greeted by stirring music, blaring from loudspeakers, people eagerly piled out of the trucks and lined up to register. A handful of soldiers escorted the women and children, a few at a time, down the winding forest paths or through the abandoned rubber plantations. Hurrying behind the soldiers, excited villagers wondered aloud about their new village.
Upon arrival in the clearing, they hesitated, then tried to retreat. Before them gaped newly dug trenches, an abandoned reservoir, a well, or an old mine shaft. Horrified, villagers were ordered at gunpoint to line up. Their elbows were tied behind their backs with red cord and they were made to kneel along the open trench. Dumbfounded, most obeyed without complaint or struggle. Soldiers administered a quick blow to the back of the head or neck with a heavy wooden hoe or a machete. Each soldier was able to kill villagers at the rate of twenty to thirty per minute with little noise or wasted bullets. The red parachute cords were retrieved for future use.
After the women and children were dispatched, their husbands and fathers were ushered into the clearings. Seeing their massacred loved ones, their own will to live weakened. Most submitted in mute silence, kneeled, and were clubbed.
[...] During French colonial rule, hundred of exploratory mine shafts had been sunk in the plantations as men searched for gemstones. These old shafts were over one hundred feet deep; the bottom could not be seen from the upper edge. Truckload after truckload of victims was dumped into each shaft. When soldiers finished, the shafts, reservoirs, and wells of Cambodia were full." (144-146)
"When the mass graves were finally discovered, the justification given us by Angka for killing women and children was that anyone associated with a "guilty person" [the educated; anyone literate; skilled workers (plumbers, technicians, etc); old government officials; anyone who had lived and worked and been schooled in the cities, basically] was tainted.
Keang had information that eventually everyone over the age of twelve at the time of the takover was ultimately scheduled to be killed [...]. Then there would be left only pliable youth who did not remember the former way of life and had no training or ability to organize resistance against Angka and its plans for a 'perfect society'." (147)
(2nd Edition. Auke Bay: East/West Bridge, 1998)
A very succinct history of what happened: http://www.dithpran.org/killingfields.htm
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