Ignorance - Schoenberg's Music Method

Everytime I read a book I discover something that I haven't heard of before. I don't remember a single time when I did not research something intriguing or new after finishing a book to learn more about it. I can honestly say that this is how I have learned over the years about different countries, cultures, history and music etc. I highly advise you to try to do so just once to see all the fun that it procures. I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I do!

Back to the subject, I was reading 'Ignorance' by Milan Kundera when I was automatically drawn to research Arnold Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Method which is discussed in the book. I got curious to know more about both the composer and the method. I knew that Schoenberg was Austrian and that he had fleed Europe when the Nazis took power. However I did not know that he was a painter and that he used to draw many self-portraits like the ones you'll see in the video below.

The method however was too complicated for me to grasp. Who knew music was this complicated and mathematic related! Regardless, the music and the drawings are just awesome.

Finally, if by any chance you happen to be a musician or a Schoenberg fan I would greatly appreciate if you could kindly share your thgouhts/ explanation or whatever it is that you would like to share with me.

Ignorance - Milan Kundera

The real review is under the picture, what I'm going to say here is just some extra stuff you don't really need to know (unless you really want to :D). I have read this book few months ago, when I had much less work/study commitment than I do now. I was satisfied overall, although the plot did not feel that elaborate in my opinion. For a quick reading, a summer reading, I recommend this book, it's "Light", if you don't enjoy it, you definitely won't regret reading it. Moreover, something in this story makes you want to finish it and know everything that is going to happen. Only way to find out what I am talking about, I guess it's to read it :) 

 

I read the book in French, for it was originally written in this language. I've known Kundera from "The unbearable lightness of being" (not the book unfortunately, but the movie with Daniel Day Lewis and Juliette Binoche in her very controversial role at the time), I had therefore high hopes for this book, but let's just say the book turned out to be ok. It's not "The unbearable lightness of being" for sure, but hey, who can write a book that good twice?! Let's be real :)

(Again my problem with cover images! seriously, can someone explain to me how does it relate to immigrants, nostalgia, ignorance?!!! How do you choose a cover pic for a book? This one really feels to me like it was chosen randomly which is a shame. Does anyone have an explanation? Please, do tell for it is very troubling for me when I see such covers and not understand the link with the story)

 

Kundera is a Czech author, married to a French translator (if I'm not mistaken). I felt the influence of his wife on his writing in the first pages of this book. I have no proof of that, I am just telling you how it felt when I was reading his explanation of the word "ignorance" and its link to "nostalgia" and the roots (spanish, greek, whatever) and meaning ("the suffering caused by an appeased yearning to return") and translation of this word etc. Honestly, this wasn't very amusing, it felt to me like I was reading the dictionary, I hated it! It was too long, and boring. Kundera had to convey to us the idea of suffering and yearning to homeland because the story deals with two immigrants returning home after the end of the communist regime. Everything he described about these characters with regards to how an expatriate feels, see things and thinks upon returning home felt very true and natural. I personally related to both characters having lived abroad (in France like Irina), and I can assure you that I felt exactly the same as them at the beginning of my coming back to Lebanon. Things changed with time, but I felt this book was telepathically written by me upon my return. To better explain myself: For writing this book, I felt like Kundera hopped onto a time machine, came to Lebanon soon after I have returned to it, telepathically read my mind, then went back and wrote his book. Clear enough? :D This is just to say how accurate his description of the thoughts and feelings of his main characters felt with regards to returning home (a home that is barely recognizable). But let's be real here, I guess the main reason behind Kundera nailing that part of the story was because he himself is an expatriate, who had left the country after the communist regime came to power. He now considers himself "French" (he became one) and feels like a stranger whenever he visits his homeland.

One of the major things that bothered me in this book was that a lot of his description of Frenchies attitudes (thoughts, reactions) was unfair (not to say rude, very rude). It felt very wrong to me when Kundera spoke about Frenchies because 1- he was generalizing and 2- I believe one should never drink from a well and then throw stones in it.

The historical background in this book, in addition to the sort of self inspired facts or events as well as the charm of  Prague or "La Bohème" constitute the strength of this book. Many ideas were also worth reflecting on, ones that deal with how people sharing a common memory remember it differently (that was excellently written). I was also surprised that the author spoke about male virginity knowing that I have only come up across books that deal with female virginity. I wasn't convinced however by the transformation of the evil virgin boy to a nice man, but I take into consideration that I can never understand what goes in boys/men' s minds the same way a man can never understand us ladies. This latter statement was very obvious in this book, where Kundera messed up big time (to say the least) in his representation of Irina. I mean I don't want to go into the details of the story but Irina is represented as a STUPID woman, one that has met a boy once (many many years ago more than what 20 years) and that has kept thinking about him carrying with her in her purse all the time an ash tray the only souvenir from that encounter. Moreover, she expects that guy, Josef whom she meets again in the book story to remember her and to start off together from that point. Later on, she is devastated when he doesn't even remember her name. Mr Kundera, I have one question for you: are you out of your mind? How do you want us to believe that? Do you really conceive us women as such? It feels like we stick to men and can never get them out of our minds. This is a bit psychotic if you would ask me. Besides why is the guy not represented as such? Finally, an ash tray?!!!!!!!!!!! not a napkin? not a pen? You've got to be kidding me!

Finally, one of the interesting characters in this book was teenager Josef's girlfriend. Briefly, Josef was a mean virgin boy who didn't love his girlfriend. On the opposite, that girl was head over heels for him. He manipulated her. He planned to hurt her in every possible way feigning the opposite. Anyone would have believed him, he was pretending he cared, he was pretending he loved her. I would have believed him. She did, and it almost killed her. She loved him so much she tried to commit suicide and fake it as an accident so that no one (especially him) would suffer for her. The girl was so good (innocent) that it makes you want to cry. Just try to imagine with me for a second that she dies for someone that wouldn't even remember her. It's just horrible. What is awful about it too is that the boy was so mean but felt so real. Boys that are evil are the best in planning stuff. No girl could ever see through them. So for all girls out there, keep always in mind that you might be sacrificing yourself for someone planning to hurt you, feigning that he loves you. Forget and move on, that's my advice to you and with it I conclude my review.

Le Dernier Jour D'un Condamné - Victor Hugo

To describe Hugo's "last day of a condemned man" in few words, I would say that this is a historically important book. I would not recommend it for anyone but I insist that it is a must meaning that upon reading it one thinks about many things that otherwise would not necessarily cross the mind.

This is not a biography of someone in particular nor just a journey retracing the last day of a prisoner sentenced to death. This book rather highlights the nitty gritty details of the process of death sentence execution in the 19th century. The journey starts at the court and stops (Not ends) at the Guillotine. Nothing out of the ordinary here you would say? I beg to differ. This book is different because its aim was to change people's attitude regarding death sentence given that at the  time of its publication, death sentence was a commonly accepted event, even a popular one that attracted people who used to gather on these occasions to watch prisoners being beheaded as if attending a show! It is scary to think that nowadays, after all this time, such practices still occur in some parts of the world and that even some religious fanatics are demanding their governments to reconsider legalizing public executions!!! This is just atrocious in my opinion for I am a fervent opposant to death sentence because I cannot grasp the logic that justifies people's right to take out another's life. And I am not at all going to comment on the public execution nonsense!!!

The strength of this book comes from the way it was written i.e. in a diary-like form that actually takes you through the last thoughts, feelings and worries of the every day, hour and minute of the life of  a prisoner "heading" towards the Guillotine (heading! :D, I am sorry, I could not help it!).  Now what is more interesting in this book I believe is that what we learn about the prisoner does not make him different at all from any other average Joe in his society. He has a family and family issues, a job and business worries and most importantly a daughter that is everything to this dad. You do not feel that this man deserves such a sentence. You will also find it hard to imagine that this "nice" guy who is being locked in a cell that has witnessed before him the passage of the cruelest criminals deserves a similar sentence. But then again, this guy might have also been worst than all the criminals before him. Hugo intentionally does not let us know what was this guy's crime or wether he is innocent because for him it is not important the only thing that matters is that a human remains a human and no one deserves to suffer this way. You might agree or disagree on the proper crime punishment method it doesn't matter but at least upon reading this book you will forever remember that regardless of the crime all humans are alike and you realize that everyone (and I mean everyone including you and I) could end up like the prisoner of this book did meaning on the other side of the bars and be judged instead of judging.

Now to finish, what I enjoyed the most in this book was that Hugo made me aware of the notion of time day by day, hour by hour and minute by minute. We all know time is precious even though we don't always act upon it but for me this is the first book that made me aware and worried about my time and time quality. 


 

 

Blindness - José Saramago

I think I am probably the persone who hates this book the most in the whole world! But first things first, you should know that I could be considered as a negative reader since I read a lot of books but only like a few.

I had never read anything by the author before and my review is not intended towards him in anyway. I just need to say what I think about this book.

 

The first thought on my mind while reading the book was: What a disappointment! They give Nobel prizes for such THINGS now? Life is so unfair! The Curie(s) got themselves killed, Marshall went through terrible agony and many others wasted their lives and health for this award and this lame story is to be considered equally important? Over my dead body!!! And I do mean it!

If this were a movie I would have flipped the channel immediately. How many times so far have this idea been exploited? It is boring; it has been boring since forever. I have to admit though, the white blindness, so creative! (Wish you could hear the sarcasm). I mean seriously, what was he thinking? What was the purpose behind this color? To make the blindness original? Is this what these numerous pages were trying to convey? Why not choose a purple blindness? An orange one? Or pistachio? The color had no connection whatsoever to the story. I feel it was UFOed in the book somehow.

Some other things I found even more creative (NOT) were: the guy with the infection (Typical Hollywood turn of event), the slut (yeah let’s add some spice to this dull life) the fight for food, the domination of the bad guys over the good ones blablabla, it happens every day around us (JUST OPEN YOUR EYES). Maybe some people feel touched when they read about these things in novels but I don’t. I don’t like when we try to mix the real world in the world of novels. It becomes either boring or unethical or at least this is how I feel about it.

Now I would have been half as disappointed as I am now if the story ended with the 7 or so persons but NOOOOOOOOO, the story wasn’t boring enough with 7 or so characters, someone had to shove in 200 more! The more the merrier maybe but all I saw was a fight for food with a greater number of people! Or were the gang and gang leader and their terms that important to convey us the message that man is an animal? We got this message from the first few pages and honestly It is something I realized a long time ago and we can see it every day around us too if we only OPEN OUR EYES (see what I did there? :D). I hate when people try to lead us by the hand to see what they think they’re the only ones to see it. Or as they call it, give us a moral. The only moral in life is that there are no morals!

Finally about the style, to write a book with no punctuation is as absurd to me as eating fries without ketchup. But honestly this wasn’t much of a bother. Everyone’s got its tastes. On the opposite, I did like, I even loved the fact that he didn’t use character names not because it was original but because he explains it in the text in his passage about the dogs not needing names to communicate with each other and live together and that this was the most convenient thing to do for the characters of this book.
See you next book J