First Post

So, I hope to get views of this blog through social media, etc, but for now I am writing pretty much for myself. But social media is really an amazing thing and means to 'fame' for all its faults. Like Facebook--I hate it, yet am addicted to it. I miss MySpace. I miss those days. I think MySpace was genuine and simple, but honestly I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg. Well, I won't get into that except to say that: they're watching. No, not tin foil hat stuff--its called the NSA. I think Mark 'helps' them. Yes, what you post is public, but you do have you privates messages, and the NSA is not like the local police, who are not looking at your Facebook like some glorified stalker. Dare I use that ubiquitous term 'creeper'? Actually, I may talk about politics in the future, but not in the beginning.

The purpose of this blog is to talk about books--mostly. And maybe publish some writing. So a couple of things to begin. Big fan of Dostoevsky. I may do a comparison of him and Tolstoy soon. It's interesting the difference between them. But at present, I am reading Jane Austen's Emma, and I really dislike it. Not quite hate though. Jane Austen is a great writer, but a Victorian prude. Everything is so nice and dandy, and nothing really bad happens. No sex. No murder. No making out. I don't actually expect sex scenes, it's just I'd like a little realistic human, romantic interaction. It's all just so formal, and I know we are much more casual today, but I know they weren't that formal back then. But I'll bash more in a bit.

Tolstoy. I am reading War and Peace. His description of dialogue, and description in general, is very detailed. He is very visual. He reminds me of well...me. There are different views among writers on dialogue, description, etc. Some are minimalists. More or less "he said"/"she said", with some more original uses of that. Maybe a brief description or voice or action from time to time. Tolstoy is very detailed in his dialogue, and in general.

Austen, on the other hand, is minimal. However, she does a good job of allowing us to understand and see her characters. I can see the proud Emma. I can see her neurotic father. But there is little "action" following the dialogue.

So, to end. Austen just is so bloody formal. A couple of quotes from other writers of her age. Mark Twain:

“I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin bone!” 

Chrarlotte Bronte:

what did I find? An accurate, daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully-fenced, high-cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.”

Well said, madame. Yes, everything is so tight and perfect! And she says, too:

“[A]nything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well… [But] She no more, with her mind’s eye, beholds the heart of her race than each man, with bodily vision, sees the heart in his heaving breast. Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman.” Oh, snaps. 

For all Austen's stories about love, it is interesting she died a maid. This may be random,, and it is not a derogatory accusation. If she was, so be it. But maybe she was a lesbian? Maybe she had no feelings for men, so never married? A quick Google search shows that this has been asked more than a few times. Was Shakespeare gay? Maybe. I think we can get a bit obsessed with all that, but it is interesting to consider for curiosity, or  to understand the literature better. We should not get caught up with it since it biases our interpretation and study of their writings. We cannot be sure, and I'm 50/50 on Shakespeare's sexuality. Austen it is more of a guess or little question.