Literary Pick (**)

Love in the Time of Cholera
-Gabriel García Márquez





















The prose was vibrant, and I adore Marquez's spirit, but the details were grueling. It's sad that I didn't love it as much as I thought I would. I adored 100 Years of Solitude, and although they are both similar in style, with minimal dialogue, in which each chapter is at least 50 pages long, made it that much harder for me to get through. It seemed to me there were more descriptions about details than about the actual events of the love story itself. This was a hard one for me to get through. The only motivation to continue till the end was my faith in Marquez's ability to make it worth my while, and although, like I mentioned before, the prose is beautiful, Florentino's love alone wasn't strong enough to support the almost 400 page novel.
To me their love story was not convincing, and it's not that I'm prejudice about love stories involving older people, because one of my most cherished love stories of all time is "Bridges of Madison County". Cholera just didn't do it for me.


This is the second book I've read which was translated by Grossman, and again she did a wonderful job!

Literary Pick (****)

The Days of Abandonment
(Elena Ferrante)




















This is a simple yet profound novel about abandonment and grief. I can tell Elena didn't write this to get a sensational reaction from her readers. I can also tell she didn't make any of it up. Knowing that Ferrante has shunned public attention and has managed to keep her real identity concealed from her readers confirms this for me.
When I heard about this story I knew I had to read it to judge it for myself. I know what pain and abandonment feels like. I knew I had to read it to be able to verify if her story is true, and now I know it is. Extremely vulgar at times but was relevant to her pain and rage. 
The character of Olga often shifted from numbing moments of temporary acceptance to an emotionally blinding yet hallucinatory state of being. Olga was ugly yet disturbingly honest.
I was unconvinced however that the love she had for her husband could suddenly die in just only 4 short months. The neglect of the children was understandable. Although repulsive, her sleeping with that neighbor of hers was also understandable, but it seemed dysfunctional and perverted.
If someone were to ask me what I enjoyed most about this story, I would have to say that it was written by an Italian person and so the emotions and reactions were of a European intensity. I don't quite know how to explain it but Olga reacted with the brutality and savagery it deserved, exactly how I think all women should react to a situation like that. Only here in America are women programmed into behaving perfectly proper after such a traumatic insulting injury. Where I come from you find where your husband is and you stab him in his sleep with no thought or conscience about anyone or anything.

The Fabric of My Life

Literary Pick (****)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

-(Junot Diaz)








This review is probably going to seem a bit choppy.
..Wao
I waited months to read this book. I have a reading order which I mentally follow, and since I don't do two fictions at once, I had to wait till I finished this massive classic I was already reading, but once I finished it I was able to finally start The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, and you know what they say,... good things come to those who wait. I didn't start reading it that day until I was able to read it in peace in an air conditioned room. I was really excited about it and even went online to view Junot Diaz's video interviews. I found one on NY1 news channel that was in Spanish. Great! I like this guy already! love the way he talks "que vaina!". Reminded me of Brooklyn. My Brother-in-law is Dominican, my family is Puerto Rican, so this is going to be cool! This is going to temporarily transport me to the scenes of my roots!
The book starts off with Junot telling us about the fuku. I personally never heard of the Dominican fuku, but in PR we have el cuco. Not exactly the same thing, and of course not in the form of a slave-driving totalitarian tyrant by the name of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, but el cuco was el cuco to us, and everyone has a cuco/fuku story. Cool, I can already culture-relate. Then there were the comical latin manners and expressions that I am so familiar with and miss. Oscar's crazy family, his treasonous friends, and the slutty around-the-way girls from the block. Ok, neat, I can relate to all that, but what I couldn't initially relate to was Oscar. He wasn't a typical teenager, at least not one that I ever encountered in my teenage years. Maybe back in the day I was too around-the-way myself to have noticed such a dork. I'm usually not that insensitive about boys, but I tend to judge people who are addicted to all that crap of gaming and comic books.  I sympathized with him a little, and I've heard guys complaining about the "let's just be friends" bullshit girls try to pull on them. I still seemed to have trouble relating to Oscar.  His problems weren't important enough for me to feel that bad for him.. There's not one video game or comic book in Oscar's world that I've ever even heard of, if in fact they are actual and not fictional comic books and games. I've never been into anime, video games, cartoons, or sci-fi so that alone made it a genre out of my reach. At first I didn't think I was Junot's target audience. This book felt like a young adult book that young adults should'nt be reading. The vulgarity of it took me by surprise, but I was later able to come to terms with it because I realized it was a story told by Yunior.
Plus, growing up in like the worst part of Brooklyn (East Ny) and being raised in a neighborhood of Puerto Ricans and Domincans I've never in my life recall dominicans calling each other niggers. Where did Diaz get that from? nigga, maybe, but not even. I think if you asked a Domicano from the island what a nigger is, they'd be like "un que?"

But..... then you start reading the story from lola's (his sister) point of view. Then you start reading about Beli's history (the mother). Oh Man! that kept going a thousand miles a minute. It had so many shades of 100 years of Solitude right down to the never-ending family curse! That's when I really started getting into it. Then there was Don Abelard's dilemma, I was horrified and captivated. I was worried there for a minute that the novel was going to be all about Oscar and his toto quest, and his video games and comic book obsession. Thank goodness it wasn't.
Once it covered the entire family history and spun back to Oscar, I was completely into it. Although, to be totally honest, I found Oscar's role rather boring. I know Junot had the talent to make him more spectacular, but maybe the lack of excitement in Oscar's role was purposely suppose to reflect Oscar's own frustrations of how unexciting his life was. All I know is that all the other characters were absolutely electrifying.
However, I don't think I've ever read so many pages in one day. This book is basically un-put-downable. I read it in the car, I read it as as I ate, I read it as I slept. The only times I put the book down was to shower.
I thought I was going dislike this book but I ended up loving it!
I commend Junot's effort in squeezing in as much Dominican political history in the footnotes of this book. I think they were the funnest footnotes I've ever read, although again, it felt like they were written for a younger audience. Perhaps that's the reason why I liked them and I just don't want to admit it.
This book was definitely more about keeping the political awareness of the Dominican Republic alive disguised as a novel.
That's ok, because the way he did it got my attention. I learned a lot about the Dominican Republic politics, that otherwise I would've never learned had I not read this book. It inspired me to go on-line and read more about Santo Domingo, Haiti, and Venezuela. Great way to keep the awareness of the socio-economic situation that still currently exists in Dominican Republic.  

The rest of the story ended a bit anti-climatic, but it was still worth my while.
I resisted this book so much at the beginning because there was something about it that felt very YA (young adult). This book is very manipulative, I like being in charge of what I read.  Which is the reason why I don't like reading hype books.  But this was a good one.
Quote:
"what did I tell you about those putas?"

Literary Pick (****)

Lucky Man
-(Michael J. Fox)

Quote of the Day

"I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing."

-Guy De Maupassant

Literary Pick (**)

Les Miserables  
-Victor Hugo

Love Letter

I love you no longer; on the contrary, I detest you. you are a wretch, truly perverse, truly stupid, a real Cinderella. You never write to me at all, you do not love your husband; you know the pleasure that your letters give him yet you cannot even manage to write him half a dozen lines, dashed off in a moment! What then do you do all day, Madame? What business is so vital that it robs you of the time to write to your faithful lover? What attachment can be stifling and pushing aside the love, the tender and constant love which you promised him? Who can this wonderful new lover be who takes up your every moment, rules your days and prevents you from devoting your attention to your husband?

Beware, Josephine; one fine night the doors will be broken down and there I shall be. In truth, I am worried, my love, to have no news from you; write me a four page letter instantly made up from those delightful words which fill my heart with emotion and joy. I hope to hold you in my arms before long, when I shall lavish upon you a million kisses, burning as the equatorial sun.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Love Letter From Napoleon to Josephine

Art of the Day

The Garden of Earthly Delights

 

Hieronymus Bosch
Hell (right wing)

Eric Roth Photography



Gross And Daley Photo

Cultural News

A Musical Message Discovered In Plato's Works






















Jay Kennedy tells NPR's Guy Raz that his discovery was partially luck. Looking at Plato's works in their original scroll form, he noticed that every 12 lines there was a passage that discussed music. "The regularity of that pattern was supposed to be noticed by Plato's readers," Kennedy says.


Music in ancient Greece was based on a 12-note scale, unlike the eight-note scale of modern Western music. Kennedy posits that Plato deliberately inserted discussions of music every 12 lines to send a secret, musical message.


What Plato couldn't tell people was that he was a closet Pythagorean. Pythagoras and his followers believed that mathematics and music were the key to the universe.


"The Pythagoreans realized that when we hear beauty and music, when we hear notes harmonizing, that's because the notes have simple ratios, like 1:2 or 3:4," Kennedy explains. "So the beauty of music is direct perception of the mathematical order underlying the world. They worshipped that mathematics."


But the Pythagoreans were a persecuted sect, Kennedy adds, sometimes violently persecuted. "They were a threat to traditional religion, like many new sects." Plato's own teacher, Socrates, was famously executed for religious heresy.


"Simply put, they were threatening to overthrow the gods on Olympus and put numbers and mathematics in its place. Prior to Socrates being executed, a number of other philosophers were banished or fled because of threats to themselves. It was dangerous in those days to be a philosopher."


As far as Kennedy can tell, Plato's message was one of solidarity simply by acknowledging the relationship between music and mathematics, but he suspects there's more to it. "Perhaps some scholar will find that — in The Republic, at least — that there is something like a melody or a score embedded in the text," he says.


If that's true, then we've read only half of Plato's writings. "There are all these hidden layers of meaning which will enrich our understanding of Plato," Kennedy says. And maybe what else Plato has to say could help us today.


"Plato's philosophy shows us one way to combine science and religion," Kennedy says. "The culture wars we're having today — about evolution for example — see science and religion as two polarized opposites. Plato's hidden philosophy shows us that he combined an emphasis on mathematics with an emphasis upon beauty, music, art and divinity. The founder of western culture, in fact wanted us to combine science and religion."
-NPRIt sounds like something out of a Dan Brown novel, but a scholar in Manchester, England, claims to have found hidden code in the ancient writings of Plato. If true, the secret messages would have made the ancient philosopher and mathematician a heretic in his day.

Jean Randazzo



Hashai



Red Glasses