i'm a very very complex person

Obviously the holiday season is not the best time of year for this journal. I'm too busy to do much reading and I'm too busy to do much posting, so the journal tends to suffer. Oh well, I've only got a week and a half left of work before Christmas break, and then I should have plenty of time to read and do whatever else I want...

Anyhow, I'm almost done with Cry, the Beloved Country. I'm impressed with the way in which Alan Paton has gradually built up intensity over the course of the novel, bringing it to the point where even the slightest details are full of meaning and emotion. I think that's why the beginning of the book seemed a little slow and stilted. I wasn't yet attuned to the subtleties of his tone and the weight carried by single words and images. Very impressive.

I took a personal day yesterday to supplement the time I had off for Thanksgiving, which resulted in me having a five-day weekend. I decided to take a complete mental vacation from my everyday life (including this journal) and to spend that time doing nothing but relaxing and enjoying spending time with my family. In retrospect, this was an excellent decision.

Now, however, I'm back... I finished All the Pretty Horses awhile ago, and it was excellent. I was very impressed with the way in which Cormac McCarthy handled his theme of the loss of innocence. Nothing was overtly stated; instead he related the events that happened and the reactions of the characters to those events, and let the gradual and subtle changes in the characters convey the theme for him. I hardly even noticed the innocence that was being lost until I got about three-quarters of the way through the book and looked back at the beginning and realized how different things were. I imagine that this replicates the experience of losing one's innocence--not only did I not realize how much John Grady was changing, I suspect that John Grady didn't really realize the extent of the changes as they were happening. The fact that certain aspects of his nature remained true throughout his experiences speaks to his own strength of character and conviction. Sigh. You can always tell that I liked a book if I'm taking about the characters as if they're real people. All the Pretty Horses was that kind of book for me. I don't know yet whether or not I want to read the rest of the trilogy of which this book is part. It seems to be a very complete work in and of itself, and I tend not to like it when authors don't know when to stop and try to add on to a story that should have ended. Also, I absolutely cannot imagine where McCarthy would go from here... I don't want to simply read "The Continuing Adventures of John Grady Cole," and I'm afraid that that's what the remaining two books would be. I only want to read them if they have something of their own to say. No way to tell that without going ahead and reading though, so I may have to seek them out.

Anyhow, since finishing All the Pretty Horses, I've been reading Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. It's interesting because parts of it are absolutely beautifully written, but in other parts I'm finding the style to be quite off-putting. I'm not really sure that I like Paton's continual use of repetition. Sometimes he uses it to great effect and the result is very powerful and moving, but at other times it seems to be merely a gimmick. Also, I initially found the dialogue to be stilted in the extreme, but I seem to have gotten used to it, and it now only seems a little bit stilted. We'll see if it gets any better than that.

Outside of those stylistic complaints, however, it looks like it's going to be a good book. I'm already engrossed in the story line, and can't wait to see what will happen next. That's usually a good sign...