Posted by .tabitha. on August 18, 2002, at 17:10:56
In reply to Re: Exactly - Tabitha, posted by Dinah on August 18, 2002, at 4:17:00
OK, now my new revised book report. When I first read it (probably high school age) I think I wasn't even adult enough to pick up on the impotency angle, or that their drinking was such an act of despair. I thought they were cool.
I didn't dislike it as much as I expected this time. I'm not sure I'd really call it sexist. The woman was not the only one portrayed a little hatefully. There really weren't any sympathetic characters. Even the young bullfighter, who might have been the hero, was shown to be narrow-minded and possessive toward Brett. Perhaps the old innkeeper was the moral center, but he wasn't really a character.
At the end I thought Jake was sort of wallowing in his victimhood, how he'd been used and hurt by women/Brett, though with his own full participation.
Anyway, I think I've had too much therapy to appreciate great literature. All I could see was jeez, these folks are serious alcoholics and totally unable to handle their feelings. Everybody drank a lot every day, and when something upsetting happened, they drank an extra lot. It was actually used as a form of communication. Brett started drinking more when she met Jake at first, illustrating her strong feelings for him. At the end Jake got super-drunk, and Brett asked him not too (really saying please don't be hurt by my affair with Pedro).
All their feelings were obvious yet not spoken of at all. It was considered a great breach of social etiquette to actually demonstrate one's feelings. For instance, the whole setup was just not workable. Here these folks were socializing together, and supposed to act like all the complicated feelings between Robert and Brett, and Brett and Jake, and Michael and Robert, did not exist. With too much alcohol, all the nasty undercurrents came out, which was considered "behaving badly". What an impossible code of behavior. The only way to adhere is if you were lucky enough to be a stoic drunk instead of a sloppy or angry one.
All I could think is yuck, how dysfunctional. How can I stick with characters thru a whole book who don't seem to grow one bit. Bleak is the word.
----------------
Random thoughts:Somewhere I think Jake was talking about friendships with women, and said that there was no basis for a friendship unless the man was in love with the woman. What a cynical view, than a man can have no appreciation for a woman unless it's sexual. I'll just hope that's not true, even though my personal experience supports that view.
The book was great for triggering alcoholic cravings. All those sensual descriptions of drinking every couple of pages.
The social setup reminded me of closed social groups, where eventually practically everyone has slept with everyone else, and you're all still stuck together at every social function. Yuck.
poster:.tabitha.
thread:548
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20020616/msgs/619.html