impressions: Franny and Zooey.

"god instructs the heart, not by ideas but by pains and contradictions"
-de causadde
franny and zooey, much like most of salingers work, was plot-less, unconventional , controversial , and downright brilliant .
its one of the many artistic things that cant be ignored at all, you either deeply love it or just loath it.
it is composed of two short storis, franny, and zooey.
I did enjoy zooey more than franny but franny was a lovely introduction to zooey.
it more than anything, in the form of grasping dialoge, present to you a series of difficult question and undeniable points, represented by the glass family, a famly of geniuses.
literally, sky high intelligent quotation, child prodigy, geniuses. who represent to you the world from the perspective of someone intellectually superior.
I think, personally, that yes, it is much more difficult to bare the little flaws of  society when you are very intelegnt, but, most of all, we all feel that, we all see what franny sees in peoples inflated ego, wanna be attitudes, and endless desire to obtain certin 'tressures'.
"I mean treasure is treasure, for haven's sake. what's the differance wither the treasure is money,or property, or even culture, or even plain knowledg? it all seemed exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping and-and it still does! sometimes I think that knowledge- and it knwoledge for knowledg's sake,anyway- is the worst of all, the least excusable, certainly."
and its most frustrating, to want endless things, and to stop and ask our selves, why we even want them.
franny, after being over exposed to the self-superior sense of higher education and the liberal artistic beliefs of the english department, repels from the idea of people basing their whole lives on being constantly admired.
she loathed their ways of dressing and speaking and assuming self worth for the lates book they have read.
she turns to a less known book about a pilgram who travels his country looking for a scholar who would explain to him what does it mean in the bible when it says "pray without ceasing".
franny becomes so incanted and gripped by this book, this book that hold a massage interlay different from the usual literature she is exposed to, the endless babble about love and depression and such things.
the pilgram's books massage was nothing but finding inner peace through this "jesus prayer" for it to be said over and over again until it becomes part of the person.
"the starters tells the pilgrim that if you keep saying that prayer over and over and over again-then eventually what happens, the prayer becomes self-active. something happens after a while. I dont know what, but something happens, and then you're actually praying without ceasing. which has a really tremendous, mystical effect on you'r whole outlook. I mean that's the whole point it, for more or less. I mean you do it to purify your whole outlook and get a new conception of what everything is about."
says franny, insecurly, with manufactured disintrest to lane (her boyfriend), who is much like them all, very 'english department'.
the book later on goes to show you the dark and tragic, the mysterious life of the glass family, Seymour who at 31 killed himself, leaving a Haiku that says " the little girl on the plane/ who turned her dolls hed around/to look at me" and then their is buddy, the self-isolating writer, there is bo bo and the twins and zooey and franny.
over and over, it speaks of the struggles anyone remotely different faces with fitting in, with finding a purpose with understand life.
it channels the ideas of why is it that we want knowledge or society, or culture or even religion.
why?
after pages and pages of raw, unhindered dialoge so realistic and approachable, after living the struggles of zooey and franny in their attempted communication of separate points of views.
we collaboratly come to the realization that:
despite how ugly things and society and egos and pretense, despite their illusion and homeliness, despite the very despicable feeling they stir.
they exist, and we are all a part of it.
I can pretend to write this review cool-ly like most other reviews but I wont.
this book was very very moving to me personally, I also face those who make me wonder why I would ever pursue anything in the arts or attempt to obtain knowledge, they make me wonder why is it so wonderful when it is exclusively being exploited for self-indulging reasons and sheer ego inflation.
"I am not afraid to compete.its just the opposi. dont you see that? I am afraid I will compete- thats what scares me. thats why I quit the theater department. just because I am so horribly conditioned to accept everybody els's values, and just because I like applaus and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I am sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I am sick of myself and everybody els that wants to make a splash"
zooey, who is just as intelligent as franny, just as good-looking as franny, and has had the same uprbining as franny, who also is an actor, serves as a great adviser to her predicament, having gone through the exact same situation of repellent, and confusion tells her, who has against her advise secretly atended a play if hers, tells her, that she is very talented, and that if she is so intent, to be 'god's actress' that 'what could be prettier'
(I will keep my personal beliefs out of this, but) we have all at one point or another thought of god, but I dont think this was the actual morral of this book, franny glass wasn't looking for god she was looking for peace and content, and not having to live her life on the audience's applause and admiration, especially an audience she dosent like.
the idea is, to be peaceful and content, is to do what one loves regardless, always regardless. to believe that despite objects and peples obvious flaws, its all beautiful, regardless.
"but I'l tell you a terrible secret-Are you listening to me? there isnt anyone out there who isnt Seymour's fat lady. that includes your professer Tupper,buddy. and all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's fat lady. dont you see that? dont you know that goddamn secret yet? and dont you know-listen to me now-dont you know who that fat lady really is?...ah, buddy. ah, buddy. it;s christ himself, christ himself buddy."

My top 10 favorite poems (no specific order)

-annabell lee (edgar allen poe)

-art one (elizabith bishop)

-when you are old (w.b.yeats)

-the love song of j.alfred prufrock (t.s.eliot)

-love letter written in a burning room (anne sexton)

-bluebird (charels Bukowski)

-there is pleasure in the pathless woods (lord byron)

-the rood not taken (robert frost)

- a song to my self (whalt Whitman)

impression: a good scent from a strange mountain.

"I read this now while I am hidden in the storage shack, invisible, socked with sweat like it's that time in saigon between the dry season and the rainy season, and I know my father will be here soon. the lawn mower s over there in the corner and this morning he got up and said that it was going to be hot today, that there were no clouds in the sky and that he was going to have to mow the lawn. when he opens the door, I will let him see me here, and I will ask him to talk to me like in these letters, like when he was so angry with some stranger that he knew what to say."-robert olen butler a good scent from a strange mountain.

the ripping of a culture, a country and the mash up of two will almost defiantly result in a dramatic and perhaps disastrous aftermath.
throw in a war, the russians, the communists, the total opposite upbringing of the westerns and the easterns and you get a very beautiful portrayal of what it would be like, to have to leave you'r home and adapt to a new life along with all the other day to day obstacles one faces.
this book was a representation of the Vietnamese aftermath and how people handeld that, be it the americans or the Vietnamese, yes.
but this is book is about so much more.
it almost never limits its self to the issues of politics rather life at large and how politics can merger it's self within it.
it channels issues of jealousy, infidelity, sexism, racism, couple struggles, understanding ones self and ones place in society.
above all it does it in such a soft little whisper of a way.
its so embalming and sweet, enriching and fulfilling, a very unique experience.
one of the very few books that combines being critically acclaimed, a light read, and a life companion.
olen butler is one of my favorite authors who truly deserved a pulitzer prize for his subtly wonderful work.
"I am nearly one hundred years old, but I can still read a man's face, perhaps better than I ever have. I sit in the overstuffed chair in my living room and I receive these vistors and I want these people, even the dull-witted and insincere ones-  please excuse an old man's ill temper for calling them that- I want them all to be good with one another."

a list.

here is a list of some of my favorite authors, poets, from new found to classic and so on:
- robert olen butler
- j.d.salinger
-t.s.eliot
- Elizabeth bishop
-steven wallace
-ann sexton
- jeffery eguinaides
-raymond carver
-angus wilson
-grace paely
-jane austen
-Charles buckowski
-harold brodkey
- guy de mupessent
- f. scott Fitzgerald
- cormac mcarthy
- william carlos williams
-john keats
- (obviously) william shakespear
-william blake
-willaim wordsworth
-samuel Coldreg
-samuel beckitt
-sara Tisdale ( way underrated)
-

impressions : the death notebook.

"it makes me laugh
to see woman in this condition
it makes me laugh for america and new york city
when you'r hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone"
 death is to ann sexton, in this thin poetry volume, much larger and vaster and more frequent then the mere process of decaying and ceasing to be, to ann, a clinically depressed poet, a women deprived of her rights, the function of everyday living, the very stale motions and actions taken, are death it's self.
"once upon a time we were all born,
popped out like jelly rolls
forgetting our fishdom
the pleasuring seas
the country of comfort
spanked into the oxygens of death,
good morning life, we say when we wake,
hail mary coffe toast
and we americans take juice
a liquid sun going down
good morning life.
to wake up is to be born.
to brush your teeth is to be alive.
to make a bowl movement is also desirable.
la de dah,
it's all routine"
ann sexton, being the free spirited, feminist, intellectual she was, was doomed for her mother's life of the 1960s rural suburbs,  terrifying as it is, to have children and a household, and a kitchen when all that is on her mind, is death and poetry, the poetry of death, and the death of poetry.
"if my mother had lived to see it
she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office
for the black, the red, the blue I'v worn.
still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of clorox and duz.
being sixteen-in the pants
I would die full of question."
once more, she was clearly oppressed, 60's society patronising her for her sexuality, assuming she is to be a housewife, a cleansed, pure unpromiscuous housewife.
with a much, much forgotten life.
bu ann was anything but.
sexton had had a very disturbed history with mental illness and eventually ended her own life.
as many other poets and artist, has drawn a beautiful, melancholy, poetic, perhaps distraught picture of death as a sort of salvation.
despite my disagreeing with so many things she believes (our religious beliefs for one)
I believe i total unbiasedness when it comes to jugging a work of art.
this was defiantly beautiful in its accurate, romantic portrayal of sexual oppression, and exploration of possibilities of life and death.
at times even, stark, pure anger.
"give me some tomato aspic, helen!
I do not want to be alone"

impressions:the road

"no sound but the wind.what will you say? a living man spoke these lines? he sharpened his quill with a small pen knife to scribe these things in sole or lampblack? at some reckonable and entabled moment? he is coming to steal my eyes. to steal my mouth with dirt." -cormack mcarthy.

somewhere in the united states, in a post apocalyptic land, is an unnamed man, and his unnamed son, walking along the indefinite road, into unguarantied, undefined survival.
practically nothing in this book goes by specifics, no one has a name, the disaster that caused this apocalypse  unidentified, lending its self to the idea, non of this is personal.
this is a pure representation of humanity, at its weakest and strongest as if the two are interchangeable, as if at the face of the cold and desertion and lack of civilization, as if in fear and loneliness and malnutrition, it is given, that the mere fatherly-son relationship, could survive, tuberculoses, and the extinction of humanity.
it also reveals men at their core, describing them from a kids pont of view as simple, and somewhat incorrect, as "the good guys" and "the bad guys".
ones who's deepened weakness crippled humanity within them, turned them into immoral barbaric, while the others were set on a deep heap of bravery.
they carry the fire.
this book was dark, to say the least, but mesmerizing in its darkness and poeticness, and full understanding of human nature that it would go one, in 300 pages of noting but humanity unhindered by luxuries and society.
a pulitzer prize winning masterpiece.
"query: how dose the never to be differ from the never was?"

impression: the great Gatsby.

"the need for illusion, and the tragedy that springs from it's inevitable failure" f. scott Fitzgerald , this side of paradise.


 Fitzgerald has recurring themes through out his writings that include: dreams, illusions, wealth, the jazz age.
and they all gather and mash up nicely in the great Gatsby.
the great Gatsby is the story of jay Gatsby, told from the perspective of his neighbor, nick caraway, who serves as almost nothing but an observer, of the man, the time, the helpless tragedies of dreams.
jay gasby is incredibly wealthy, and is notorious for his great parties.
nick is friends with daisy and tom buchanan, and their friend, jordan baker, who later becomes the love intrest of our narrator.
tom, is a rather awful, dislikable larg man, who is cheating on his wife, Gatsby, is in love with daisy, and she with him.
they had been in love with each other for 8 years, before daisy married tom, but due to certin complications, daisy married tom.
among the books meny messages, the idea of illusion, is what struck me the most.
he portrays illusion as a very strong and dominant factor in the human experience.
for illusion to run through a whole society, a whole decade, a widely believed (back in the 1920s especially   phenomena, that wealth was equivilint to happiness.
there is the illusion of these grand parties, when no one seems to be enjoying their time.
the illusion of jordan baker to nick Caraway, when eventually, her tand slim arms and witty personality, fail to stur any fuss within him.
there is the illusion of daisy to jay Gatsby, the illusion of her waiting for him yeas later.
the illusion of her voice, full of money.
and most of all, the illusion of the greatness of Gatsby, who otherwise was, a mere poor boy, helplessly in love with another illusion.
"Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; if you can bounce for her too, till she cry 'lover, gold hatted, high bouncing lover, I must have you!" thomas parke d'invilliers.
This was the quote scott Fitzgerald appropriately chose for the book carrying on the theme of illusion, how the man illudes the women into loving him, and how he iludes himself into believing her artificial love would be sufficient

Fitzgerald was angry at the world around him when he wrote this, but old enough, and creative enough to put his anger in such a moving way.
F.scot Fitzgerald was born to a to a lower middle class family who could barely make enough money to 'make ends meet' so the fear, and insecurity of being poor always remained with Fitzgerald.
upper classed white women were brought up to take care of their appearances and figures so they would attract a wealthy husband who would maintain them the lavished lifestyle the were use to.
scott fell in love with a girl named zelda and they were engaged for a while, zelda broke off the engagement because he was too poor, later on he wrote the novel "this side of paradise" which got him a small fortune, and he married zelda.
but he had never forgotten, that, zelda did not marry him when he was poor.
the Fitzgeralds were known for throwing parties, almost as luxurious as Gatsby's, after a while of reckless spending , they, consequently, lost all their money.
they then moved to france, where the living was more affordable back then.
Fitzgerald's main mission seemed at times ( intelligently so) to record accurit portrits of his time, which he thought, was an especially legendary time, but after a while he felt a certain end, his getting older, the jazz age  slowly fading away
"one day in 1926 we looked down and found we had flappy arms and fat pot and we couldn't say boop-boop-a-doop to a sicilian" said Fitzgerald.
"'we're getting old' said Daisy. ' if we were young we'd rise and dance' "
by the end of the book, nick talks about how he has turned 30,  and how, all of this madness, all of these parties and illusions are over.
" 'I am thirty' I said ' I'm five years to old to lie to my self and call it honor' "
this book was a beautiful collaboration of melancholy reality and the aesthetics of illusion.
this is the way of dreams.
they are complex and helplessly out of reach, we stuff our selfs with little bits of condolence.
constantly being pulled forward and backwards to actions almost irrational.
"so we beat on, boats against the curent, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

hello!

welcome!
this is luckily my second blog so I wont be unexperienced.
this blog is dedicated purely to english book reviews, even hough I read in arabic as well, I think I shouldn't mix these two.
I am going to review around 1 to 2 books per week, the pace may get slower in the future.
I am open to suggestions, so please, do suggest!
I highly esteem, and various complex emotions, books; to extents in which I am terrified of speaking about them, but, the authors have written them to be perceived with variation, so, so be it!
I say the art of impressions, because, literature, and art in genreal, is mostly impressions, do not attempt to over analyze it, or carefully articulate it, the question is, what impression did it give you?
I also named this blog, infinite wallace, in reference to infinite jest, because there are two books that I am too scared, yet very excited to read, ulysses and infinite jest.
once I full comprehend them and give them a proper review, I will award my self the title of a good reader.
any ways, I hope you would enjoy this blog, and never take anything too seriously.