Today's topic: Howard's End. It is amazing how one's opinion of a book can change so drastically. It happens for me frequently. I'll begin a book and like it very little. As I lay Dying and Invisible Man are two examples of books that I failed to find stimulation in until the last quarter. But my god, that last quarter was heaven. Not only that, but the book as a whole suddenly made sense. The boring parts and the confusing parts clicked. And I'm sure that, if read again, the entirety of the book would read differently.
Howard's End was boring at first. As a teenager, I cared very little for the story of two London sisters and their misadventures in love, life, and lengthy lame luncheons. But Howard's end is so much more than that. E.M. Forster uses the narrator to share very deep, even spiritual, messages. Let's read a few, shall we?
"Margaret greeted her lord with a peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire." Wow. Let them reconcile, our conventional side and our "passionate" side in order that they may form a genuine human.
"Round every knob and cushion in the house sentiment gathered, a sentiment that was at times personal, but more often a faint piety to the dead, a prolongation of rites that might have ended at the grave." Whitman's "When Lilac's Last in the Door Yard Bloom'd" suggests that death brings suffering not to those it takes, but to those it leaves. The living are left with memories. The living are left with "sentiment." Sentiment that might have ended at the grave had the individual not been acquainted, loved, or even observed, by others. To die alone is to leave others unfazed by your passing. Alone, you leave behind nothing for others to learn from, to grow from. The lonely that pass away are "food for worms," and only the worms are the recipients of a brain that could have amounted to so much more than a simple snack. But, just as community yields wisdom, it also brings about sentiment and pain. It brings about feelings.
Forster on books: "They mean us to use them for sign-posts, and are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the destination." I found this particularly applicable to my own reading studies. I won't impact your interpretation of this line by stating mine. Read in context, this passage is astounding. Really fantastic.
Wise Forster also states: "One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions."
Alas, just as I have never been privy to one who impacted none, and therefore am unable to truly speak on the hindrance of other's development brought about by the loneliness of one, I see no counterargument to "My mother is a fish." Because, what is a fish?
Howard's End was boring at first. As a teenager, I cared very little for the story of two London sisters and their misadventures in love, life, and lengthy lame luncheons. But Howard's end is so much more than that. E.M. Forster uses the narrator to share very deep, even spiritual, messages. Let's read a few, shall we?
"Margaret greeted her lord with a peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire." Wow. Let them reconcile, our conventional side and our "passionate" side in order that they may form a genuine human.
"Round every knob and cushion in the house sentiment gathered, a sentiment that was at times personal, but more often a faint piety to the dead, a prolongation of rites that might have ended at the grave." Whitman's "When Lilac's Last in the Door Yard Bloom'd" suggests that death brings suffering not to those it takes, but to those it leaves. The living are left with memories. The living are left with "sentiment." Sentiment that might have ended at the grave had the individual not been acquainted, loved, or even observed, by others. To die alone is to leave others unfazed by your passing. Alone, you leave behind nothing for others to learn from, to grow from. The lonely that pass away are "food for worms," and only the worms are the recipients of a brain that could have amounted to so much more than a simple snack. But, just as community yields wisdom, it also brings about sentiment and pain. It brings about feelings.
Forster on books: "They mean us to use them for sign-posts, and are not to blame if, in our weakness, we mistake the sign-post for the destination." I found this particularly applicable to my own reading studies. I won't impact your interpretation of this line by stating mine. Read in context, this passage is astounding. Really fantastic.
Wise Forster also states: "One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions."
Alas, just as I have never been privy to one who impacted none, and therefore am unable to truly speak on the hindrance of other's development brought about by the loneliness of one, I see no counterargument to "My mother is a fish." Because, what is a fish?
I think you should have titled this post "A simple snack."
ReplyDeleteAnyway, nice touch.
If you like these head-swirling books, you should read "A Passage To India" next. But keep your wikipedia about Buddhism handy.
For something different, try "The Long Good-bye" by Raymond Chandler.
And, in between, "Franny and Zoeey," my personal favorite.
Hi, Solomon --
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love Jim P.'s suggestion for how to entitle your post!!
Aside from that, I want to mention my favorite sentences in your post: "But, just as community yields wisdom, it also brings about sentiment and pain. It brings about feelings." You've got me thinking about the varieties of feeling that require community. Not sure what I think.
Finally, as you know, I am thrilled that you're so glad to be reading this book. As you know from our face-to-face conversations, it's been so rewarding for me as your teacher to observe you going through these transformed attitudes toward the book, however it is that the book and your life are working together to make any of this matter to you.
And want to thank you for all the planned and in-passing comments you've made to me that have helped me put into words for myself why it is that this book so moves me. About a month ago, you directed my attention to the narrator's voice in a way that helped something I'd been struggling with to crystallize for me; about a week ago, you mentioned how you were relishing how Margaret changes over the course of the novel. You very facilely laid out several stages in her development. Whenever anyone lays out a framework, whether or not I adopt that framework as a way of organizing my thinking, it invariably gives me a new way into something that matters to me.
Indeed, sign-posts should not be confused with destinations, but you've provided me with some great sign-posts in the last few weeks, and I love the fact that you so value the sign-posts that these books and stories are for you.
Now I have to admit that I don't understand the very last part of your post at all. So be it!
Blog on, Solomon!
JSS
Yeah, the whole "mom is a fish" thing got by me too.
DeleteBut hey, now that we have Joan's attention, I just remembered that I gave her some reading lists too.
What's up with that?
Thunder At Twilight, Frederick Morton. Book reports due before Christmas.
I promise I didn't go crazy at the end. haha. I was alluding to Faulkner in an abstract and completely confusing way.
DeleteThanks for the suggestions!