"LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER" HOLY HOT!

"LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER" by D.H. Lawrence was a delightful surprise.  Unfortunately since I am currently a hobo, bouncing from place to place, the book is buried somewhere in my pathfinder. I've been camping for two weeks with my family and now I'm in a small studio.  We are looking for a permanent place, but until then it is quite interesting to fulfill all my obligations living out of a suitcase. At least I don't have to hop any trains!  Anywho...... yes that was me  making fun of "Lady Chatterley" not so long ago! But, (blush, gush...gush) I have been over swept by the romantic tide of D.H. Lawrence.  The steamy love scenes between Connie Chatterley and her Game Keeper are something else! And, if you've ever been passionately in love (especially for the first time when you really go out on a limb and get a little crazy) the book will have you visiting  some far away delightful memories!  I know there have been several movies made of this book, but I have never seen any of them and don't intend to!  The beauty of "Chatterley" is in the language.  The exacting expressions of love, passion, fear, lust, insecurity and the visual imagery along with personal connections are nothing that could possibly be conveyed in a movie. It takes awhile to get into, but it's worth the effort (and there is not hidden meaning in that statement!;)

BEAUTIFUL HAWAIIAN (NANI HAWAIIAN) WORDS..........

FIRST OFF, HAVING MAJOR TECH PROBLEMS WITH MY PAGE!  ANY SUGGESTIONS APPRECIATED!

I'm almost done with "LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER", literally maybe 15 pages and then will write a review.  I like trying out other blogger's themes i.e. OHH .....BOOKS reactions to the first few lines of a new book.   In this post, I'm borrowing an idea from THE CAPRICIOUS  READER, "Wondrous Words Wednesday". 

Since I have to stick to my goal of reading the top novels and have to finish the book before I can write a review, it's fun to venture off on some other roads.  Living in Hawaii, your ear has to become accustomed to the language and it is no easy task to pronounce Hawaiian words.  When I first got here three years ago, I called to set up new doctors, etc. for my kids.  Of course, I had to ask for directions.  This was a challenge, not only to understand the street names but also the vernacular.    The women on the other end of the phone replies, "Ok so you take Kuakini to Hualualani Road, then take a right on Palani, left Luhia street, left on Nani Kailua and then you're there!  DAHHH, HUH??? Can you spell that?  So after much practice and mutilation, I do have some of it down.  Here are some  beautiful Hawaiian Words:

Aina (eye na):  earth

A Kamai (ah kamy): smart

Aloha: Hello/Goodbye

Mahalo:  Thank you

Wahine (Wa heen knee): women

Kane (ka-nay): men

Kumu (koo moo): teacher

Nani (nah knee): beautiful

Kai: The Sea

lani (la-nee): The Heavens

Imu (E-Moo): pit (which they roast pigs in, and yes I've tried this, yum!)

AND THE PIECE DE RESISTANCE:

humuhumunukunukuapua'a 

WHICH MEAN TRIGGER FISH AND NO, I CANNOT PRONOUNCE IT!  BUT GIVE IT YOUR BEST SHOT!!

WORST BOOK YOU EVER READ?

Yes, this is negative, but on my book blog site I posed the question "What is the worst book you've ever read (or author)? Because good recommendations are just as valid as bad ones!  Of course we tend to read books in the genre that we like.  And, I can't sustain attention if a book is really horrible.  I toss it aside or give it away.  Here are some of the responses:
THE TWILIGHT SERIES (listed by more than one person)
THE LOST SYMBOL
GERMILA
KAROLINE
CITIZEN GIRL
MERMAID CHAIR

AUTHORS PEOPLE DIDN'T CARE FOR
STEPHEN KING
JAMES HERBERT

SO, WHAT IS THE WORST BOOK/BOOKS/AUTHORS YOU'VE EVER ENCOUNTERED?
GO TO BOOK BLOG SITE http://www.bookblogs.ning.com/profile/KristinaDaniel
OR EMAIL ME AT bookreviewsbykris@gmail.com
OR JUST LEAVE A COMMENT
THANKS!

LADY CHATTERLEY'S HARELQUIN ROMANCE

"Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence was first published in 1928.  It also graced the banned book list along with "The Catcher In The Rye".

I've decided a good technique is to put myself in the era in which the novel was written because modern mentality tends to precipitate an unfulfilled experience.  This happened right away when I cracked the first pages of "Chatterley".  The book seemed hokey and cliched.  I recall seeing a shelf full of Harlequin romance novels at my Grandmother's house when I was a kid.  The writers (mostly women) used terms like: throbbing member, hot virile shaft, achieved a climatic eruption.  And, I was like... Wow!  This is really lame! This novel was definitely the precursor to all Harlequin romance novels. BUT, the writing is superb and besides the "sex" scenes and some contrived content it is a pretty good story so far.  If I can get over a description like this (I have to detach myself from 2009 and go back to the 1920's when nobody really was writing material like this) then I'll be okay.
"Connie found it impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his.  And he roused a certain craving passion in her, with his little boy's nakedness and softness, she had to go on after he had finished,  in the wild tumult and heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and self-offering, till she brought about her own crisis, with weird little cries."  
See what I'm saying?
Oddly enough Lawrence uses these kinds descriptions, but then busts out with a couple of F-BOMBS by page 35, way before "The Catcher In The Rye".  It leaves me asking why the squishy, squirrely loin talk?  


The main character is of course Lady Chatterley and unfortunately for her, her husband was paralyzed in the WWI.  I say unfortunate for her, because Lawrence describes him as someone who really didn't care about sex when he still had the ability to do it.  Thus far in the novel, he doesn't seem too distraught  over his condition, which of course is extremely peculiar.  So, as one may guess, the book is about Lady Chatterley trying to "get her freak on"!  Yes, I did just bust out with that expression!  


HAVE A GOOD VOCABULARY!

Words in the first few chapters:
bucolic
supercilious
tremulous
simulacrum
laconically


Words Used Over and Over AND OVER:
loins, loins and more loins
crisis (huh? figure that one out!)
bitch goddess
nakedness
erect

TOO HARD ON "THE CATCHER IN THE RYE"?

I too, like Salinger, have a tendency to be a bit cynical at times. My mother says it comes from my father's Scottish side.  One argument in that family and they don't speak years!  Maybe I was too hard on "The Catcher In The Rye" by not mentioning other facets of the book that were subtly weaved within the context.  Cara, whose site OOH....BOOKS is definitely an inspiration to all book bloggers, reminded me of this in her comments:

"One interpretation of this book that may be missed is that it is about grief. Did you mention that in your previous post? I can't remember. Anyway, part of why Holden is the way he is is that he recently lost his brother. His parents just shipped him off to boarding school where he's expected to go on like nothing's happened. I never liked A Catcher in the Rye, but this interpretation makes me appreciate it more."

It is true that Holden Caulfield was a boy that was ignored. He brings up his mother's careful selection of ice skates for him, but mentions nothing more except that she has a very nervous nature.  His father's career is mentioned but their relationship is never touched on, which suggests that it wasn't positive or negative, it was nonexistent. Holden focuses on memories of his brother Allie who died from cancer when he was very young.  It is obvious that he misses him terribly but life seems to have gone on for everyone else in the world as if Allie didn't even exist.  Holden is alive but holds the same distinction as his brother Allie, invisible.  He mentions several times that he just wants to "disappear"; he wants to go away and maybe he'll show back up twenty years later just to say "hi"; he will punish his family by really disappearing and then how will they feel? 

He focuses on his relationships with his other siblings as proof that he does exist and he derives a sense of pride from his older brother's and sister's accomplishments.  He doesn't feel he has any  noteworthy talents or accomplishments himself. 

Caulfield is a boy on his own.  How else could he leave school and be running around New York City, staying in hotels, hiring prostitutes, spending copious amounts of money and his parents have no idea of his whereabouts. He states that his parents will get over his dismissal from school in a few days. 

I thought the saddest part was when Holden, toward the end of the book, sneaks back into his house to visit his sister while his parents are gone.  They are obviously very close (she is younger); she is very upset that he has failed out of school again.  He needs someone to care.  After a short visit, he has to find somewhere to go and he doesn't want to be alone.  (One of the major themes of "The Catcher In The Rye" is his never ending quest to find someone to be with, anyone.  It really is quite sad, as he calls people who are mere acquaintances just to have someone, anyone to talk to.)  He calls a former teacher who he feels genuinely cares for him.  Holden describes his former teacher as a man who is quite well off because he married a much older wealthy woman (I knew where Salinger was going with this).  Holden has stayed at his house many times in the past.  His teacher, Mr. Antolini, tells Holden to come right over.  They a have a chit chat about  Holden's wasted potential, as Antolini slurps down a steady stream of burbon.  Holden receives blankets and a sofa to sleep on but is awoken by Mr. Antolini stroking his head.  Of course, Holden is scared to death and asks him what in the hell he thinks he's doing.  Antolini replies, "just admiring".  Of course, this is heart breaking because this is one of the only adults Holden felt cared for him genuinely.  He comments that he knows a perv when he sees one because this has happened to him many times before.  Again, evidence that he has been on his own for along time.  No wonder he is so disenchanted with life.  

 The people who care about him in life are so few.  This is probably why he feels people are so "phony" and they just pretend to care about people when in actuality they only care about themselves.  

A dilemma I'm facing is whether I should read about the author before picking up the book? Admittedly, I do not care for J.D. Salinger, but that doesn't mean this book is without merit.  Salinger controlled his wife, and kept her completely isolated, until the point she almost killed her infant daughter and herself just to escape his domineering often cruel treatment.  His wife Clair commented: 

"She remembered that Salinger would chronically leave Cornish to work on a story "for several weeks only to return with the piece he was supposed to be finishing all undone or destroyed and some new 'ism' we had to follow." Claire believed "it was to cover the fact that Jerry had just destroyed or junked or couldn't face the quality of, or couldn't face publishing, what he had created."

Salinger would change his beliefs from one ideology to another so quickly that his family couldn't keep up with his excessive demands to adapt.  He wouldn't let his wife seek medical treatment for their children because he was on a "Scientology" kick.  This is when his wife finally decided their marriage was over. 
Salinger, in his fifties, wrote to a young old girl who wrote an article for "Seventeen" magazine and told her she could interview him.  Needless to say she abandoned school and all her potential to live with Salinger.  I guess I find this kind of behavior very predatory and selfish and this does seep into my opinion when reading the novel.  
Something to ponder on whether I should forgo reading about the author.  What do you think?  

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BASEBALL!

I remember picking "The Catcher In The Rye" off a list when I was a freshmen in high school because I thought it had to do with baseball and I had heard it had something really filthy in it!  OOOOH, I thought, I wonder what it is?  All a teenage kid needs to hear are the words "banned" "swearing" and "sexual content" and we're all over it!  There wasn't too much exposure to this sort of thing  when I was growing up.  I came from a small town in Maine where our TV had rabbit ears and we could only pick up ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS!  That was it!  Staying up to watch the "Gong Show" was a big deal.  Then one dark and seedy night, when I was around twelve, I stayed at my friend's house in town who had just hooked up cable.  What a novelty, the Darwin de-evolution of the human mind had begun! I turned on HBO and the movie "Dressed To Kill" with Angie Dickinson was on.  What a shower scene and she was totally "NAKED" and then some dude got in the shower with her, OMG!!


Now, today it seems foolish that anyone would get their under garments in a twist over this book.  And, what is even more foolish is that movies that were rated R like Rambo seem tame next to P13 movies today.  In that light, reading "The Catcher In The Rye" doesn't seem that big of a deal.  The swearing becomes gratuitous and annoying.  I thought I had missed all the "F" words when they all showed up in the last few chapters. How exciting! So Holden Caulfied is  this rich, confused kid that keeps failing out of prep schools. He swears, drinks, chain smokes, is obsessed with sex (imagine it, a teenage boy obsessed with sex), has the dough to take off from school, gets a hotel room, hires a hooker (then gets stage fright), is super negative, hates everyone, is impulsive, has ADD, is deluded, depressed and feels lonely.  Ummmm, sounds like many teenagers I've come across. Except he doesn't,  like other socially elite kids today, have a sex video on UTUBE or his own reality TV Show.

Holden Caulfield is more intelligent than most kids his age and is overly obsessed with people being "phony", which is a Salinger personality trait. In comparison, I remember sitting in my room as a teenager, listening to soulful music, ruminating about everything that sucked (especially my parents) and how was I going to keep myself from becoming one of "them" or their lame-o friends.  I used to write for hours about dreamy fantasy's with boys were I gave them "love potion number 9" so they would only have eyes for me, or how I would become super successful and show all those snobby losers how wrong they had been about me, or maybe I'd just be a fashion model with a PHD!  Oh, the choices were endless!   And, then reality......


"The Catcher In The Rye", will take you back to that time in your life and for that it is a great book.  How often do we get to go back and visit our angst filled adolescence.  But there is something odd, the fact that Salinger as an adult could so easily slip into this personality and embody so fully the language and thought process of Holden Caulfield, makes me believe he is emotionally immature.  And, if you visit his bio. this is very much evident.  I don't really care for Salinger.  His history seems to show him as a very narcissistic, inappropriate and controlling person.  For me, this book really isn't top 100 material, but because it personifies the rebelliousness of a certain generation it is # 64 on the list.  In my opinion, Salinger is no Fitzgerald or Steinbeck and isn't entitled to this attitude of snobbery in regards to his talent. I don't think Salinger published anything else noteworthy because he knew he couldn't write anything better then "Catcher" and he is not someone who can handle the embarrassment of failure or the criticism.  It is safer to remain a recluse and laze on you laurels.  Salinger is 90 years old now and is looking down from Mount Krumpit hating the Who's.  I can see him telling a young woman at the local store, "hey, maybe you've heard of me, I'm kinda a big deal.  I wrote a lil' book called "The Catcher In The Rye".  To which she responds, "Like, what are you talking about dude?" 



Coming Through the Rye by Robert Burns
(1759-1796)

---

Coming thro' the rye, poor body,
Coming thro' the rye,
She draiglet a' her petticoatie                                   
Coming thro' the rye.

O, Jenny's a' wat, poor body;
Jenny's seldom dry;
She draiglet a' her petticoatie
Coming thro' the rye.

Gin a body meet a body
Coming thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body -
Need a body cry?

Gin a body meet a body
Coming thro' the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body -
Need the warld ken?

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

Well, let's see, I've completely neglected my reading and visiting my friend's blogs, which I love to keep up with, always finding little pearls.  We (my family) decided to downsize from a $2100. rent in Hawaii and were looking for something cheaper (economy, economy, economy blahh blahh blahh!) So, we secured a place and at the last minute it was rented out beneath us for more money apparently (someone willing to pay a lil' more).

Anywho, now we are hobos.  We stayed at a friend's for 4 days, and my kids certainly wore out that welcome.  Familiarity breeds contempt!  Now I'm sitting on a hotel bed (of course after stripping the bedspread.  Always do that if you haven't been..... I could tell you one sick forensic story!)  We are here for 3 days, and then since my kids are off from school for 10 days we're going camping in the Kohala District of the Big Island.  I told my friend where we would be camping and she said, "Oh, just so you know a lot of homeless people camp there." So, we'll fit right in.  Hopefully I'll be reading and blogging from the beach and no one will steal  my can goods or my computer.

Started "The Catcher In The Rye" a book I had read as a freshmen, and again like with The Great Gatsby was like HUH?  I was rather slow in high school and now only marginally improved. I'm going to take Cara's (Ooh .... Books!) approach with the beginning of this book and blog my first reactions....

Salinger writes:

"IF YOU REALLY want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

Well, he sounds like a self centered, know it all kid, just like we all were.  And, tragic of course (the Copperfield reference) all kids think they are living akin to "Angela's Ashes" when they're told they can't use the car on Friday night. My first thought was "No! I do not care to hear about your life!  And why would you think anyone would want to hear about it? Awfully conceited aren't you?"  But , he grows on you, Holden Caulfield.  He is sixteen and quite clever and impressed with himself.  His adolescent attitude, amusements, judgments, and irritants remind me of myself or a piece of any sixteen year old.  I'm only on Chapter Six, but it's a short book that I'll probably complete by tomorrow.  Apparently, "one diligent parent counted 237 appearances of the word "goddam" in the novel, along with 58 "bastards", 31 "Chrissakes" and 6 "fucks". Now in the 1950's when this became the book all "Marlon Brando look a likes" had to read, it caused a huge ruckus. And, apparently still does among some "others".  No Comment!  Everyone knows Wicca membership has grown exponentially since "Harry Potter" came out, all those nutty kids wanting to be witches and wizards!!  We'll have to see if I swear more after reading The Catcher In The Rye or pull similar shenanigans as Caulfield.  I'll keep track of my progress.

Tomorrow, reading by the hotel pool......