Call Me by Your Name

 I was not expecting to like this book, mainly because I have seen the movie and did not particularly like it. But it was a cute story. It was a cute book. Now, they say that standards are good but double standards are better. There are multiple sex passages and sex references in this book. Normally I would be put off by that. I find modern descriptions of sex in contemporary literature rather gratuitous. That, for example, is part of the reason why I tend not to like things written by Haruki Murakami. But I have mostly read books that deal with heterosexual sex. For that reason, it feels somewhat unfair that this book, with its various descriptions of homosexual sex between men, did not elicit in me a similar criticism of the prose. I wonder whether Hannah Fidell, the creator behind FX on Hulu's series "A Teacher", would also hold this book to a double standard. A quick reminder: "A Teacher" is scathingly critical of sexual relationships between adults and minors. The female teacher in that series was severely punished and there was no mercy shown to her for the sexual relationship she had with a male minor. I wonder what Hannah Fidell would think of a sexual relationship between an adult male graduate student and a male minor. Clearly, André Aciman thinks there is nothing wrong with that. Quite the opposite. Am I missing something? Is there an argument I am not seeing that explains why the creator of "A Teacher" and the author of Call Me by Your Name reach polar opposite conclusions about the same kind of sexual relationship? Or could it be that Elon Musk is at least partly right in saying that there is a woke mind virus that is infecting the minds of many in the United States? I would like to know. Verdict on the relationship between Emmanuel Macron and his wife: pending—it will depend on whether the judge is Hannah Fidell or André Aciman.

Mrs Dalloway

Reading Mrs Dalloway was a much nicer experience than reading To the Lighthouse. I found several passages very beautiful. I loved the descriptions of London. And I saw a lot of myself reflected in Peter Walsh—at least my previous self, a self that I am trying very hard to leave behind. Despite that, I have sadly decided that I do not like Virginia Woolf's writing style, at least not her stream of thought style of those two novels. I find it extremely confusing, extremely difficult to follow. So much so that it opaques the beauty of several masterfully written sentences. It is almost like Virginia Woolf thought that beauty could only exist in immensely complex and incomprehensible narratives. I do not think I dislike things only because I do not understand them. I do not understand the stars in the sky, yet I admire them greatly. In this case, however, I do not understand her writing style, which happens to greatly contribute to my dislike of her novels.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

There is not really much one can say about this book. At least it had the decency of being so short that you do not really have to spend much time with it. I read The Reluctant Fundamentalist in 2009, before I started this blog so I do not have a record of my opinion on that book. But from what I can remember, it was a more interesting read, which renders How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia a disappointment.

Anna Karenina

 There is a rumour going around that says that when William Faulkner was asked which were the three best novels of all time his reply was: "Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, and Anna Karenina". That is high praise from an author I do not know. I have heard of him. I have not read any of his novels, but his reply now makes me very sceptical of anything he might have written. Not that I think that Anna Karenina is bad, it is just that it is not even the best Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace is a masterpiece that is far superior to Anna Karenina. But let us leave it at that.
  Now, when I think of the past I usually think of it as atavistic. I say that in a negative way. We should not be fooled by the splendor of empires, the unchecked power of the nobility, the palaces and the superstitious religious rituals. Think of the rigid social hierarchy, of the oppressive classism, of the unbending gender roles and consequently of sexism and the invisible misogyny. Invisible to the eyes of most of the members of past societies. Now, of course, all of that is still very much present in contemporary societies. But Anna Karenina is testament of how much worse it was in the past. Who killed Anna Karenina? Let me answer the question: it was the patriarchy. Interestingly—yet completely as expected from someone who was born in the third decade of the nineteenth century—the word "patriarchy" appears exactly zero times in Anna Karenina. I know very little of Leo Tolstoy but I am choosing to believe that he joins me in sympathising with Anna Karenina. Not because she was an exemplary human being—we know that like all of us she was deeply flawed. But because of the cruel way that she was treated by society. Some of the characters in Anna Karenina behave in a way that, to me, they are evidence that at least there were some people who had a nagging sense that there was something wrong with the double standards between men and women. That is what, in turn, makes me believe that Leo Tolstoy was one of them, and that hence this novel was at least in part critical of society. Assuming that I am right in saying that, it is therefore impressive that a man of the nineteenth century could write a novel that, however tangentially, was aware of the problems that women faced in the society he lived in. I say "man of the nineteenth century" but in reality, I wonder if is possible for a man of the twenty-first century to be that aware of the struggles that women nowadays go through every single day. Perhaps we are more aware of them now. Hence us now using words like "patriarchy" to refer to something that was left unsaid in Anna Karenina. That awareness is what makes Anna Karenina so special, and so worth reading and recommending to others.