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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 3 of 3. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by noa on January 24, 2004, at 18:27:07
Just started "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides. So far so good.....
Posted by NikkiT2 on January 30, 2004, at 16:40:59
In reply to Now reading..., posted by noa on January 24, 2004, at 18:27:07
How you enjoying it now?? I did really enjoy it.. But it kinda dissapointed me that it wasn't true.. I wanted to believe SO much *l*
Finished "The Hotel new Hampshire" and really really enjoyed it!! The more I read of Irving, the more I enjoy his books!!! *g* It reminded me heavily of "World According to Garp", lots of similarities in there, but it made me laugh at times, and I really grew to love the family in it.
I've now started "The Red Tent" and its gripping me already.. Its kinda biblical, in that it has biblical characters in it.. Its the Story of Dinah, Jacobs only daughter (Joseph's sister, as in Joseph and his technicolour rain coat).. So far it has just been about her mothers (Jacobs 4 wives). But its certainly very enjoyable so far.
Sorry it took me so long to reply
Nikki xx
Posted by noa on January 31, 2004, at 14:11:36
In reply to Re: Now reading... » noa, posted by NikkiT2 on January 30, 2004, at 16:40:59
Irving does like to bounce certain characters, symbols and images around through his various novels. It's kind of fun. He is one of my favorite authors.
I'm enjoying Middlesex. The writing is so good.
I read the Red Tent as a "skim". I should go back and reread it. I didn't end up taking it out of the library for a real read because for some reason the writing didn't appeal to me at the time. But the subject is very interesting to me, so I skimmed it out of curiosity.
As a kid, I studied Genesis and the stories of the families of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I remember vaguely a reference to Rachel's little god idols, etc. and that Jacob had found them and gotten angry or something, and that somehow her having gone back to get them when they were leaving for somewhere had gotten them in trouble somehow. Later, as an adult, I discovered that some of that story was not in the Biblical text itself, but in medeival commentaries about the text. That happened a lot--later learning that my memories of the actual Biblical stories were not from the text itself, although it had been taught as though it were. So the idea of exploring that aspect of Rachel's life is fascinating to me. Of course, now, it seems logical to me that Rachel would have continued to have her idols, beliefs, rituals from her cultural background, and from the surrounding culture, even while her husband was delving full force into monotheism. Of course, when I learned about the idols as a child, from a traditional religious POV, there was no reference to them having anything to do with sexual or fertility rituals, which Anita Diamant explores in the book.
The biblical stories, as they appear in the Hebrew Bible, of course, are slanted toward the monotheism angle, and not a lot of attention is paid to what the non-Israelite contemporary cultural and spiritual life might really have been like for these characters, and how it was part of their lives, as opposed to just being part of the lives of the non-Israelites. Traditional teaching being what it is, the stories of Jacob's times are slanted as though the Israelite identity and belief systems were already fairly well formed, which is very anachronistic, of course because Israelite identity only came after Jacob, who was renamed Israel as part of his spiritual transformation.
I think it is interesting to explore the life of these women characters--how sexual taboos and rules affected them, what the relationships were like with the men and with the other wives, etc.
Plus exploring the enigmatic character of Dina seems fascinating. All I remember learning about her, from my childhood bible classes, was that she was kidknapped and raped by members of a hostile neighbor tribe and that her brothers banded together and exacted revenge on that tribe by murdering them.
This is the end of the thread.
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