I’m not much for contemporary fiction or anything avant-garde, however, I figured maybe I should expand my tastes and try this out. I tried. I really did. I even quit once but forced myself to try, try again. But alas, I just couldn’t finish it. Not my thing at all, and I wasn’t going to make my personal reading unenjoyable just for the sake of finishing it. I’ll save that for school.

Now, the premise is really interesting. Basically, it’s about a house where the inner dimensions exceed the outer dimensions. For example, a hallway appears out of nowhere and seems to lead to oblivion, while there are no outer protrusions to account for the new hall. The Navidson Record is a documentary about the family that lives in this house, and how its shape-shifting qualities affect their dynamics and actions.

Follow me so far? We’re going to switch stories now.

This guy… I forget his name – I’m looking through the book and I still can’t find it, so we’re gonna call him Joe – moves into this apartment that was previously rented out by an old man, Zampano, who died. Among Zampano’s few belongings left behind was a book he had written on The Navidson Record. Joe starts reading this book, which is apparently so disturbing and mind-shattering, and tries to hunt down all the people and references in it. As he does this, he adds footnotes to the pages of Zampano’s book. So we have three parts: the documentary, the book written about the documentary, and the footnotes of the book.

Another interesting thing is the design of the text in the book. This was the main reason I tried reading it, actually. I thought it was really neat. Here are some examples:

I guess the main thing that bothered me though was the third part. As Joe tries to track down the people Zampano refers to in the book, he writes down his escapades in the footnotes, which many are, in my opinion, completely pointless and gratuitous. My own personal impression of the first 100 pages of House of Leaves is a – and you can quote this – thesaurus-aided acid trip with delusions of grandeur.

I did want to find out what was the deal with the house and the Navidson family, but simply couldn’t get past Zampano’s annoying and meticulous analysis of every single glance and sigh from everyone in the documentary, and Joe’s gratuitous tales of drugs, alcohol and hookers. The book in general took itself way to seriously.

Of course, this is coming from someone who didn’t finish it. Maybe it got better in the next 300 pages, who knows? But I had more interesting things to do, like read John Donne.

I picked up The Best Known Works of Voltaire around a month ago from a pay-what-you-will donation shelf. I read Micromegas and am about halfway through Candide. I don’t quite understand the ending of Micromegas…but nevertheless, there still were some interesting things said.

Micromegas, 120, 000 ft high, is an inhabitant of the star Sirius. After being banished for basically being a philosopher he travels the universe and visits many other planets and stars. He makes friends with an inhabitant of Saturn, and together they continue to explore and discuss philosophy.

The opening conversation between Micromegas and the inhabitant of Saturn is as follows: The Saturnian speaks how even though his people have seventy-two senses, they still feel restrained by their lack of comprehension and that “their imagination transcends their wants.”

“I sincerely believe what you say!” cried Micromegas, “for though we Sirians have near a thousand different senses, there still remains a certain vague desire, an unaccountable inquietude incessantly admonishing us of our own unimportance…”

Micromegas then asks how long Saturnians generally live (15,000 years), and receives the reply: “Lack a day! A mere trifle!”

“It is the very same with us,” resumed the other, “The shortness of life is our daily complaint, so that this must be a universal law in nature.”

“Alas!” cried the Saturnian, “few, very few on this globe outlive five hundred revolutions of the sun (these, according to our way of reckoning, amount to about fifteen thousand years). So, you see, we in a manner begin to die the very moment we are born: our existence no more than a point, our duration an instant, and our globe an atom. Scarce do we begin to learn a little, when death intervenes before we can profit by experience. For my own part, I am deterred from laying schemes when I consider myself as a single drop in the midst of an immense ocean.”

After this conversation, the two philosophers decide to travel together and eventually come to earth. At first they believe the Earth to be uninhabited, especially the Saturnian, because they cannot see any life present. However, upon closer observation, they notice a whale in the ocean and then a ship. Eventually, they establish communication with the humans on the vessel (“O ye invisible insects, whom the hand of the Creator hath deigned to produce in the abyss of infinite littleness! I give praise to his goodness, in that he hath been pleased to disclose unto me those secrets that seemed to be impenetrable.”).

Micromegas and the Saturnian engage in philosophical discourse with the inhabitants of Earth asking them what they believe the soul is – to which the humans reply quoting their various authorities such as Locke, Mallebranche and Aristotle.

What ends the discourse is the claim of the last sailor, who asserts that the two visitors’ “fashions, their suns and their stars, were created solely for the use of man.” This puts Micromegas and the Saturnian in such fits of laughter that they accidentally dropped the ship and had to search for a good while to find it again. Micromegas says that before he leaves earth, he will write them a “choice book of philosophy which would demonstrate the very essence of things. When the secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris receives the book and opens it, he finds that the pages are blank.

“Ay, ay,” said he, “this is just what I suspected.”

And thus it ends. Like I said, I’m not going to pretend I understand the ending, but it was an interesting short story anyways.

Just thought I’d let you know that I have updated the Welcome to Gin and Tonic page with a bit more info about me and the blog, so you know who the heck is telling you, “ZOMG, you HAVE to read Without Remorse by Tom Clancy!”

Which you really should, btw. John Kelly is my hero.

Anyways, what you can probably expect in the next few posts, whenever they may be, is some stuff on Micromegas and Candide by Voltaire, House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (first book in a long time that I abandoned due to ridiculousness), the poetry of John Donne and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I have not read any Paradise Lost in over a month, but I am not abandoning that, so sometime down the road there will still be Paradise Lost posts…

Also, if you’ve been with me since near the start of the blog, I am still reading through the Bible, although the pace has slowed. A lot. =P I won’t be posting so much on that though; I’m leaving theological/debate traffic for other blogs; I prefer to stay more in the books/literature niche.

Anyways, thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon!

So, I have been reading lots the past month, I’ve just been too lazy/busy to write about it. But here we go, hopefully I’ll have some good fall features for ya.

Anyways, I read The Four Loves a few years ago, but decided to re-read it because, well, I’ve always been interested in the many different facets of “love” and figured brushing up with some of C.S Lewis’ thoughts might do some good. It did, as it always does.

Lewis starts by differentiating between Need-loves and Gift-loves. That is, a Need-love would be the love a child would have for his mother because he is in dire straits without her. Gift-love is the love of the mother for her child, as she gives her time and commitment to taking care of him. Regarding God, man’s love for god must be nearly entirely need-love, “for our whole being by its very nature is one vast need.”

He then discusses two interesting concepts of nearness to God: nearness by likeness and nearness by approach. Being made in the image of God, we are already nearer to him than, let’s say, animals are. But this is merely an image. Nearness by approach is “taking the long way around,” the hard road that seems to least resemble heavenly glory. I thought it was fascinating when he said, “Man approaches God more nearly when he is in a sense least like God.” “I must decrease, and He must increase” as Paul said. The less of ourselves we have in sight, the more God can fill our vision.

So the four loves are these: affection, friendship, charity and eros. He points out that while God is love, love is not God. “A faithful and genuinely self-sacrificing passion will speak to us with what seems the voice of God. Merely animal or frivolous lust will not…We may give our human loves unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God – Then they become gods, then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves.”

The idolatry of erotic love was the great error of 19th century literature, where falling in love equaled sanctification.

He then talked about pleasure: Need-pleasure (drinking a glass of water is pleasurable when you are thirsty) and pleasures of appreciation (walking through a garden). “The need love, like the need-pleasure, will last no longer than the need.” Our need of God can never end, but our awareness of it can.

Those who temporarily turn to God in need or tribulation are not insincere – they are aware of their need- who wouldn’t?

“Nature gives us images – terror, gloom, jocundity, cruelty, lust, innocence, purity…In them each man can clothe his belief, but we must learn our theology and philosophy elsewhere….A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature, and experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy.”

On affection:

“As gin is not only a drink in itself, but also a base for many other drinks, so Affection, besides being a love itself, can enter into the other loves and color them all through and become the very medium in which from day to day they operate.”

On friendship:

“Friendship has least commerce with our nerves.” It is biologically unnecessary. Eros provides conception, and affection, upbringing. Companionship, a biological need for a social species, is the matrix of friendship, but not friendship itself. “Friendship was exalted in ancient and medieval times because it was most independent or even defiant of mere nature…The deepest and most permanent thought of those ages was ascetic and world-renouncing.”