Steven Millhauser's Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer is the book that I just finished...besides seeing it on my long list of books to read, I first heard about it from the book snob at the independent bookstore on top of Queen Anne Hill. She said to me, when I told her I was doing this project(a project that offers me at least a small bit of pride), "Well, there are some great books on the list but a ton of terrible ones. Have you gotten to Martin Dressler yet?" What's interesting, is that I read another book on recommendation of hers The Winter Queen, a boring tome, the time which it took to read it being a week of reading time that I WILL NEVER GET BACK. So, why I thought she might be right with Dressler I have no idea. So, the book didn't suck. It was actually pretty interesting or at least engaging enough for me to blow through it pretty quickly. However, it wasn't really that memorable. It was kind of like eating white bread with butter, it tastes pretty good but it isn't that flavorful. Martin Dressler, the title character builds an empire in New York City, based on his dreams, but makes a fair share of mistakes along the way, showing his humanness. His wife is a mentally ill self-centered bee-yotch, he should have married the less attractive but far more intelligent sister...He has higher expectations for the hotel-occupying public than what actually occurs. But, we all make mistakes, right? I probably won't forget what I thought about Martin Dressler for a long time because of what that woman said to me and the context of our conversation, but otherwise, it would totally have gone into the pile of novels that I read and then file in the back of the rolodex of my brain...Now we're all tied up: Pulitzers 25, GGs 25...:)

So, this is the quote(it's really really long), that I loved from The Hours(finding it also particularly relevant to me) and I wanted to document it before I returned the book..."Yes, Clarissa thinks, it's time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children(and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.[paragraph break] Heaven only knows why we love it so" (Cunningham 225-226). This quote is from the second to last and last page of the book. It's not my favorite book, by far, but it's pretty amazing.:)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I'm not really, though I do admit to not caring for her writing too much. I was wondering how I would like The Hours, because it focuses around Virginia Woolf and promised to be similar in writing style as Woolf's novels. I've read A Room of One's Own, Jacob's Room, and Mrs. Dalloway, the book upon which The Hours was based, and Virginia is not really my style. But after reading The Hours, I don't know why...I can't really figure it out. I felt like Cunningham's Virginia was a woman I could very easily relate to, as were the other women in the book. I feel often, like Virginia, that I'm outside of my body, looking in on my own life, exploring my own grief, frustrations, and the internal voices that speak to me almost as if I am a bystander. That sounds super odd, I guess, but I do feel that way at times. Also, the preoccupation with death of both the Laura Brown character and Virginia, how the suicidal thoughts were described reminded me of my years in college where I battled depression. I wanted to check into a hotel room(remember my Veronica entry?) much like Laura Brown did for those few hours, to escape, for certainly at that time, which was before I came to terms with what I wanted to do and my homosexuality, I was constantly feeling like I was losing touch with reality, like I wasn't a part of my own present. The Hours was a fabulous book, giving me hope for the Pulitzer prize system, a book about characters who are homosexual, male and female, living lives as openly gay, as well as the characters who are trying to sort out their own budding sexualities. The Canadians have done it, not only having a book with openly gay characters in it, but also being on the whole less conservative about what they chose to give the GG to, so, even though the American awards tend to be more conservative AND this was a book about lesbians written by a man, at least it's still A HOPE. His style is so cinematic in span, I do admit that I wonder what the movie would be like, especially since in the beginning Clarissa sees a woman that she thinks is a movie star that could be Meryl Streep, when I know that in the movie Clarissa's character is played by Meryl Streep. How ironic.:) There's a quote at the end about the bittersweet-ness of life, but I don't have the book on me while I'm typing this, so I can't add it until possibly later. However, it's all good, I guess.:) What I must say is it's really nice to have 45 minute lunch breaks(even though at times they feel a bit forced) because I can get A LOT of reading done.:) I feel like I've read so many books by men lately, but that's not really the case I guess, I just checked, it's only been 4 in a row. When I get up to 10 books in a row, then I'll have to go back to reading the ladies. Not like I'm lacking in books by them either. Pulitzers 24, GGs 25.

So, I just finished Philip Roth's American Pastoral. Hmmm...when I think of "pastoral," I think of Beethoven's 6th symphony, pretty cute cupids flying around, hearts and flowers(yay Fantasia!), of peaceful things like trickling streams...That, of course is the irony of Roth's title...his character Seymour "Swede" Levov is living the peaceful American life: he is a blond-haired Jew, who has fulfilled his bargain in the American dream; he was a sports star in high school, went to college and did very well, inherited his father's business, ran it successfully, married Miss New Jersey(who albeit it is a Catholic) and had a beautiful baby girl. Unfortunately, this bouncing baby girl grew up to build a bomb at the age of 16 and blow up the local post office/convenience store, killing the local doctor. Then the girl disappears, going underground to avoid capture by the FBI...The book is mainly about Swede and his inability to deal with the loss of his daughter and the following destruction of his marriage and his sanity. He is filled with a great deal of hindsight, all the what ifs...it reminds me a lot of my parents, especially my mom, who always seems to propose those kinds of questions, though unlike the Swede who carries out the dialogue internally, my mother asks these questions directly of me, the culprit...You see, it is I who now carries the much tossed around crown of being the black sheep of the family...my sister used to wear it proudly, causing a rift in the family not unlike what will happen to California if we get that really huge earthquake that the scientists are promising...but now that she's cleaned herself up and become the upstanding heterosexual "Jenny from the block" so to speak, it's my job to be the black sheep...my mother is constantly full of the what ifs: What if I had done this differently? Would you be straight? What if I had done that differently? Would you be a lawyer? How annoying is that? Also, she seems to be ignoring who I am and only focusing on the "what should have been." Seymour Levov does much of the same, for over 400 pages. What he seems to not get, even by the end, is the fact that so much of our lives and the ones that touch our own, is completely out of our control, especially when it comes to raising children. We are at the mercy of what we give birth to, it is unfortunately not the other way around. And, giving birth to children is the ultimate Russian roulette...This book portrays an interesting snapshot of America during the Vietnam war and how people may or may not have reacted and how divided the country was. Merry(Levov's daughter) acts before she is legal on her beliefs and protests the war, like many did at the time, in all kinds of different ways. Okay, enough of the plot summary...Philip Roth has written a lot of books(this is his 22nd book), and obviously someone out there likes him, because he's been published...I've heard through the grapevine that his early books include a lot of scenes of male masturbation, so he's never really been high on my list of people to read(because you know how men turn me on;)), and now that I've read American Pastoral, I think I'm okay with not reading any of his others(unless they come highly recommended). The biggest problem with was that to me it seemed like a really good idea for a book that could have been written way better. It dragged on A LOT. It got better by the end, and I can't say I hated it, because I really liked some of the parallels to Milton(the section headings, and the fact that Levov is so figuratively blind to the world around him, much like Milton was literally blind), but I mean, really...The first section is told from the point of view of an unreliable, biased(stars in his eyes) kind of narrator who "imagines" this man's life after he finds out about the terrorist daughter and then proceeds to write a "novel" about it. It took to long to get to the "novel" part. The other thing I was thinking about constantly was how would I react to this book if I was a boy? Would I like it any better? I'm finding that I like books written by men less than books written by women...Overall, I would like to think that I'm pretty even across the board in terms of favorites by both sexes, but lately I've been reading my fair share of books by men and have not really been feeling it. I think if I was a father, maybe with this novel I would have more to relate to(or at the very least a middle-aged male, of which I'm neither of course). My favorite part of the book oddly enough was when, in a flashback, Levov's then to-be wife and his father get into a discussion of religion and how a grandchild will be raised...it's super funny because it's all done negotiation style...and the grandfather to-be insists that his grandchild is not going to "EAT JESUS" over and over again. This, unfortunately came towards the end of the book. So, final verdict on American Pastoral? Meh...Perhaps I'll do better with The Hours. GG's 25, Pulitzers 23...