Of Human Bondage by W.S. Maugham

"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it;" ~ Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham was an English novelist, playwright and short story writer famous for his novel, Of Human Bondage. The book is said to be based on his own life. It was made into a movie and became equally popular at the time starring Leslie Howard (Gone with the Wind fame) and Bette Davis.

The book provokes. As demonstrated in his writings, faithful love has no place. And then again, it can be attributed to the writer's tormented emotional life, from his unhappy childhood and perhaps even unhappier adult existence. Maugham often wrote satire and humour, but he told his stories well that endeared him to his readers.  

Mozart: A Cultural Biography by R. Gutman

The book Mozart: A Cultural Biography, written by Robert W Gutman, is a well-researched and carefully studied, fascinating portrait of the musical genius that is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, arguably the greatest composer of all-time who lived during the Enlightenment Era of 18th-century Europe.

Mozart is an extraordinary portrait of a man and his times, a brilliant distillation of musical thought. Gutman takes us to the lives of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his devoted father Leopold taking us to the cultural, social, political and religious life of Europe with brilliant philosophers and literary minds such as Voltaire, Goethe, Rousseau, among many others. 

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

 Literature / Novella 

 Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Ernest Hemingway's 1952 novella The Old Man and the Sea is about Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who undergoes an epic, three-day struggle to catch a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. It is a story about human endurance, dignity in defeat, and the deep, respectful bond between man and the natural world. Hemingway was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his mastery of the art of narrative, demonstrated in this novella, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."  

The Plot

Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman goes 84 days without catching a single fish. on the 85th day, he rows far out into the Gulf Stream and hooks a massive, 18-foot fish. For three days and two nights, Santiago fights the powerful fish, suffering physical pain, bleeding hands, and exhaustion while developing a profound respect for the marlin, which he calls "his brother".  

Manolin is the devoted young apprentice and close companion of Santiago, who he taught to fish when the boy was just five years old. He is Santiago's only true human friend in the Cuban fishing village. After Santiago goes 84 days without catching a fish, Manolin’s parents force the boy to switch to a different, luckier fishing boat. Despite working on another boat, Manolin continues to look after Santiago by bringing him food, coffee, bait, and helping carry his gear. Manolin deeply admires Santiago's skill and character, unlike the other fishermen who mock or pity the old man's bad luck. At the end of the story, after Santiago survives his exhausting ordeal with the marlin, Manolin vows to go fishing with him again. 

After harpooning the marlin and strapping it to his skiff, relentless sharks attack the blood-scented carcass on the way back to the shore. Santiago fights the sharks off until no meat is left. He returns to   his village with only a giant white skeleton. Despite his loss of the fish, he safely falls asleep in his hut. His devoted young apprentice, Manolin, promises to fish with him again.  

Key Themes and Deeper Meanings 

• Grace Under Pressure - Hemingway explores how an aging  person faces decline and hardship with a quiet and stubborn pride rather than self-pity.   
• "Man can be destroyed but not defeated" - This means that physical loss or failure does not matter if we maintain our honour, courage, and effort. Santiago loses the physical prize to the sharks, yet his spirit remains unbroken.   
•  Man Versus Nature - Instead of viewing the ocean or the marlin as an enemy to conquer, Santiago sees himself as part of nature. The struggle is mutual, noble, and balanced.  

Symbolism and Allegory 

• The marlin represents a worthy adversary and the peak challenges of life.
•  The sharks represent the destructive forces that strip away human triumphs. 
• Manolin represents youth, loyalty, love, and the passing of the torch from one generation to the next. 

While Hemingway famously claimed the story was meant to be taken literally, readers and critics have long noted rich parallels, such as Santiago carrying his mast up the hill like a cross referencing the crucifixion.

Image:

The Old Man and the Sea. Trade Paperback, Simon & Schuster Books. 

Resources

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby (1993) 

The Old Man and the Sea. en.wikipedia.org/  

The Old Man and the Sea. www.britannica.com 

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring (1994)  

(c) June 21, 2012. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights Reserved

Bibliophilia and Readings (Part 1)

Books We Read.

Link to 'Bibliophilia and Readings' Part 2

 

 

 

***My entries continue in 'Bibliophilia and Readings' Part 2

 

8 February 2024

 

Postmark Paris: A Little Album of Memories by Leslie Jonath. Unputdownable, charming little book I finished reading in a day.  It stays in my bookshelf and I believe it is the first version published by Chronicle Books (1995), as I must have gotten it sometime 1996.  I love the book not only because of the wonderful reminiscences and exquisite images, but because I've been an avid stamp collector in my youthful years, plus I got a lovely surprise seeing a Mozart stamp image, the third to the last illustration in her book.

 

Postmark Paris is a story of a ten-year-old girl's stay in France interwoven with the stamps she collected there. It creates a lyrical memoir of engaging discoveries of a curious child in the beautiful city of lights and gaiety. When the young author moved to Paris for a year, one of the first places her father takes her is to the stamp market. Her adventures are magically captured in the dainty reproduced images of the postage stamps she collects. Even for an adult, the book is a delight. Between the charming memoir and wonderful stamps and illustrations, this little book will capture any child's imagination. Truly, a book not only for the young but also for the young-at-heart, I highly recommend it as a gift book. 

5 February 2024

 

Joyce Carol Oates' I'll Take You There, a novel about a young woman's "coming of age" and quest for human connection that happened at a fictional university during the turbulent years of the early 60s - antiwar protests, Vietnam War, Civil Rights movement, the "give peace a chance" mantra, etc. The narrator calls herself "Anellia". The novel consists of three parts: (part one) in which Anellia, originating from a poor, migrant and blue collar family from upstate New York, describes her experiences as an outsider in an upper class sisterhood in Syracuse, New York; (part two) her experiences of a lover with a different ethnic (Afro-American) background; and (part three) finally her coming to terms with her family background. The brief plot and characters can be found at wiki.  Honestly? I sense that the author is writing through deeply personal material in this book... she's holding important clues to the autobiographical impulses that appear partially to shape her fiction. 

 

23 January 2024

 

A book I thought I'd let go but again, decided not to. I'm currently revisiting Bernard Mac Laverty's Grace Notes, shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize. I like it then. I like it now.  With impressive artistry and astonishing intimacy, Irish writer Mac Laverty brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna - estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother and a woman composer making her mark in a male-dominated world. It is a story of resilience. Of sacrifice. Of fierce love. Of grace. Catherine McKenna is forced to face the baggage she's carried since childhood in an overly oppressive religious environment as she returns to bury a difficult father in her hometown Northern Ireland. She forges peace with her mother and confronts the ghosts of her constricting past. In Glasgow she gives birth to a child and receives a music career-making commission. Through it all, she strives to maintain her kind of art. It is truly a book that the Virginia Woolf of A Room of One's Own would instantly understand. If you love classical music like I do, grab a copy of this book. You might just be carried away by its melodic sounds, and find love in its purest form. 

 

18 January 2024

 

I've  just finished re-reading The World is Round by Australian writer Louise Mack. Having culled about a dozen books today for donation (my ongoing 'Letting Go' project), I thought this will be my last addition for the day. I found a review to my liking, changed my mind; the book stays in my shelf for now.   Reviewer: WHISPERINGGUMS (January 5, 2017). Accessed Jan 18, 2024, 6pm. whisperinggum's copy is the same as mine. 

 

16  January 2024

 

Here's a Japanese novel I dawned upon my bookshelf. I must have read it moons ago, but it's good to revisit. The Twilight Years by Sawako Ariyoshi, translated by Mildred Tahara. The book looks at the problems of caring for the elderly in a verge of senility surrounding a modern industrial society. It tells the story of the Tachibanas, and ordinary family living in a Tokyo suburb, who after the sudden death of the husband's mother, are faced with the care of his aged father, Shigezo. The task of looking after the old man falls mainly on Akiko, his daughter-in-law, herself a working woman. With quiet desperation, she tries to support his struggle for independent survival, and by the same token, she puts up with her family's everyday life as an ordinary housewife's responses to unbearable pressures. The author "creates a story that has the poignancy and emotional force of subjective personal experience while retaining a universal meaning. (About the author: Ariyoshi Sawako, (20 January 1931 – 30 August 1984) was a Japanese writer, known for such works as The Doctor's Wife and The River Ki. She was known for her advocacy of social issues, such as the elderly in Japanese society, and environmental issues. Several of her novels describe the relationships between mothers and their daughters. She also had a fascination with traditional Japanese arts, such as kabuki and bunraku. She also described racial discrimination in the United States, something she experienced firsthand during her time at Sarah Lawrence, and the depopulation of remote Japanese islands during the 1970s economic boom.)

 

I've loved books all my life but lately, I mainly want to read a book that can refresh me like a bubble-bath after reading it. The clock's ticking fast and there are lots of wonderful books I'd love to read, five of them are beside me now... / Tel.  10 May 2021.  

 

11 November 2023.

 

As some friends would know, I've been culling books from my 'ruthless' down-sizing. The exercise is sometimes painful especially letting go treasured books. And then again, we've got to face the moment with openness and acceptance of the inevitable 'time to let go'.   

 

Here's one book I've decided to reread, and might not even let go. I've always loved reading historical fiction books.  It's The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland. Artemisia Gentileschi was an artist during the Baroque era. It's a story of suffering, love and the triumph of talent. From her extraordinary creation of original paintings, patronage by the Medici and Galileo's friendship, this brilliant woman lived as she wanted, but paid a high price.           

 

 

October 28, 2022

 

Kafka on the Shore is a 2002 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel. Its 2005 English translation was among "The 10 Best Books of 2005" selected by The New York Times and received the World Fantasy Award for 2006. It is a surreal, magical realism novel told through two alternating plots, parallel storylines that eventually intersect. Read a detailed narrative   here. 

 

 4 September 2021. 

 

Olive Kitteridge / Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout. Recommended by a writer friend, Chris Eirschele.  

Olive Again [Hardcover]: Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply lovable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her. Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life. 

 

1 September 2021. 

 

Oh the days dwindle down, to a precious few... but the days grow short when you reach September. Hello September! 

 

I have few books waiting to be read. With lock down that started last week of June 2021 still going on due to COVID-19, I've slowed down on reading. Rather, I've been busy with other priorities; mainly, another interest, one that has gone through the cracks for a long, long time.      

 

10 May 2021. 

 

My latest read: Virginia Woolf  by Hermione Lee. Published by Vintage Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. NY. 1999.

 

Subscribing to Virginia Woolf's own belief in the fluidity and elusiveness of identity, author Hermione Lee comes at her subject from a multitude of perspectives, producing a richly layered portrait of Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf, the woman that leaves all of her complexities and contradictions intact. 

Quoted: 

"One of the most impressive biographies of the decade: moving, eloquent, powerful as both literary and social history."- Financial Times

"A biography wholly worthy of the brilliant woman it chronicles... It rediscovers Virginia Woolf afresh." - The Philadelphia Inquirer

 

27 January 2021.

I happily picked up some of my ordered books from my local bookstore yesterday. I'm so looking forward - too much reading to do. This is most likely my last entry for sometime...   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19 January 2021. 

Latest books in my pipeline I'm interested in looking into:

 

  How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

• Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time: A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past by Patrick Alexander.  (Am about to start reading it; got the book recently. My no. #1 priority book to-read.) 
• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (local bookstore still looking into it)
  
• The Vanished Bride by Bella Ellis (Rowan Coleman)
• What Stars are Made of  by Donovan Moore. The life of Cecilia Payne-Gopppishkin. (already ordered; may take a while). 
• Clementine by Sonia Purcel. (I'm surprise that before this work by Sonia Purcell, the only other biography of Winston Churchill's wife (influential in her own way despite playing it more traditional but  a significant role as a woman's advocate) was written by Mary Churchill Soames, one of Churchill's daughters.) 

And then I have several eBooks waiting in the pipeline mainly written by wonderful creative writer friends, including Jo Allen (Jennifer Young), Liz Ringrose, Janet Cameron, Chris Eirschele, Natasha Sheldon, Val Tobin, John Erwin, Carol Rzadkiewicz, and Maria Blanco, to name some. They're my active friends at Facebook.   

 

This could be my last entry here. Lots of books waiting in the pipeline. I might be "quadruple-booking", that is, reading one main book, whilst three more started...   

 

29 December 2020.

 

More books to explore.  With physical distancing due to Covid-19, there's time to follow-up where these books will lead me... actually, I have few more to add to this list, later...    

• The Greater Journey by David McCullough tells the enthralling, inspiring story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, hungry to learn and to excel in their work.
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a multi-layered tale about a ten-year-old boy named Daniel Sempere, who picks up a copy of a book by an author who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Daniel and his father live above a bookstore, and their lives revolve around the love of books.
• March by Geraldine Brooks. It's the story of the absent father from Louisa May Alcott′s Little Women - and conjures a world of brutality, stubborn courage and transcendent love. An idealistic abolitionist, March has gone as chaplain to serve the Union cause. But the war tests his faith not only in the Union - which is also capable of barbarism and racism - but in himself. Brooks novel is a love story set in a time of catastrophe. As March recovers from a near-fatal illness, he must reassemble and reconnect with his family, who have no idea of what he has endured. He explores the passions between a man and a woman, the tenderness of parent and child, and the life-changing power of an ardently held belief. 
• The Woman from Saint Germain by J.R. Lonie. Two strangers go on the run to outwit the Nazis in 1941: She is a celebrated writer stranded in Paris after her French lover is killed fighting the German invasion. He is an enigmatic foreigner with a dangerous secret, fleeing Nazi-controlled Austria. Only the war could bring them together.

19 December 2020. 

 

List of books I've noted in my iPhone worth looking into, and some I've already read:    

• The Crystal Cave (Arthurian Saga: Book 1) by Mary Stewart ... the last enchantment, the wicked day, the prince and the pilgrim - covering Arthurian legend.  
• Madame Chrysanthème is a novel by Pierre Loti, autobiographical journal of a naval officer who was temporarily married to a Japanese woman while he was stationed in Nagasaki, Japan.
• The Woman on the Stairs by Bernard Schlink. It's not an examination of emotional inheritance as is Homecoming, nor intergenerational guilt like The Reader. Rather, it is the story of one individual's struggle to feel the losses and trauma he has experienced in his life.
• The Daughter of Victory Lights by Kerri Turner. An enthralling story of one woman’s determined grab for freedom after WW2 from a talented new Australian voice. This romance and historical novel is 'Part Cabaret, Part Burlesque...' Kerri Turner's second novel following her impressive debut novel The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers. (I met and chatted with Kerri at Dymocks bookseller, Chatswood)    
• The Light Behind the Window by Lucinda Riley, is a breathtaking and intense story of love, war and, above all, forgiveness.
• Tchaikovsky: The Early Years 1840-1874 by David Brown. 
• What on Earth Have I Done?: Stories, Observations, and Affirmations by Robert Fulghum. Somehow, I turn to his books when I need some uplifting, a smile or a chuckle. What on Earth Have I Done? is an armchair tour of everyday life as seen by Robert Fulghum, a man who has two feet planted firmly on the earth, one eye on the heavens and, at times, a tongue planted firmly in his cheek. The answer is neve easy... Fulghum writes to his fellow travelers, with a sometimes light heart, about the deep and vexing mysteries of being alive.

 

25 November 2020.

 

Added in my list of books I want to read:  The Lost Love Song by Minnie Darke. A bewitching novel about love, second chances and the power of music.

 

 

16 October 2020.

 

What I would want to read:  Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus, translated from the French by Justin O'Brien. (Resource: Goodreads)

The book comprises of six stories, written at the height of Camus' artistic powers, all depicting people at their decisive, revelatory moments in their lives.  The six works featured in this volume are:

"The Adulterous Woman" ("La Femme adultère")
"The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" ("Le Renégat ou un esprit confus")
"The Silent Men" ("Les Muets")
"The Guest" ("L'Hôte")
"Jonas or the Artist at Work" ("Jonas ou l’artiste au travail")
"The Growing Stone" ("La Pierre qui pousse")

  

  

11 September 2020.  

An interesting link I found today, choc a block with organised information of great books and literary works in chronological order works best books. The website creator/author (BeckChris) collected over 25 lists of the best books and best literature of all time and combined them into one meta-list, sourced listed.  Make Lists, Not War: The meta-lists website. Accessed 14 Nov 2020. 

Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

Literature / Novel

Out of Africa: A Novel by Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) 

(Released by Penguin Books)                             

 

Out of Africa is a 1937 autobiographical memoir by Danish Karen Blixen who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen. 

 

The lyrical and luminous memoir of Kenya that launched a million tourist trails, immortalising this famous quote: 

'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills . . . Up in this high air you breathed easily . . . you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.'

Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music by Stephen Fry

Amongst other classical music books I enjoy reading is Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music as told to Tim Lihoreau.


Stephen Fry is hilarious. His humour is what I expect him to be, exactly as he is portrayed in the book's cover. That cheeky look! Being a lifelong Mozart admirer, I particularly wanted to know how he approaches, attacks, and perhaps throws dirt at Wolfie. Not that bad! Fry simply provides his readers a light treat through history, a glimpse of the maestros, favourite composers - what was then, what is now, in the lives of these composers, these geniuses of a lifetime. I love the way Mr. Fry treats his subjects, with obvious endearing wit.


(c) July 2008. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.