The problem is that the book, Safe Conduct by Boris Pasternak, is insanely boring. Maybe boring is not the right word - pretentiously literary probably describes it better. Here is an illustrative passage:
We take people as our symbols so as to overcast them with weather, set them in their natural surroundings. And we take weather, or what is one and the same, nature - so that we may overcast it with our passion. We drag everyday things into prose for the sake of poetry. We entice prose into poetry for the sake of music. This, then, in the widest sense of the word, I called art, set by the clock of the living race which strikes with the generations.
Certainly, this is brilliant writing. I just can't read it. Every time I try to read this autobiography, I fall asleep. I read about 20 pages on the train before I passed out. This is not good for my class discussion possibilities. However, I am glad that I now have a cure for the insomnia that plagues me.
you lost me at "we take people as our symbols." Don't you find it infuriating that there's so much good shit out there to read and yet, you are being forced to read that? I'm so sorry!
ReplyDeleteYeah.... in defense of the professor, though, the first two things we read - "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" and "Berlin Stories" - were great. On the other hand, I read way ahead on the list, and I disliked two of the other three books I read ("the Emigrants" and "Autobiography of My Mother," which I assumed I would love and was shocked to discover that I really did not). But my friend assured me that another assigned reading, "Goodbye Columbus," is her favorite work by Phillip Roth. So it seems like a mixed bag.
ReplyDeleteI used to have a genetics textbook that could have been sold as a sleep aid, I swear. I still have no idea how DNA works.
ReplyDeleteDNA? I have a hamster who runs on a wheel to make my brain work. I don't know nuthin' about no DNA!
ReplyDeleteI don't think that is brilliant writing and as a librarian, I am highly qualified to judge it. Ha! Ha! My response to that paragraph was "Huh?" I prefer writing that goes a little something like this: "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish..."
ReplyDelete-Steph