“The boys exchanged uneasy glances. It was their first experience with the inexorable logic of women, which is overwhelming even, or perhaps especially, when it is wrong. This was new to them, exciting and frightening.”

East of Eden. Another Steinbeck epic.

Although I finished it over a week ago, I haven’t been able to adequately react. Here are some thoughts….

To start with, since the novel spans a continent, two generations, and the breadth of morality, it is much too far above me to try and coherently distill all of the thoughts and impressions that it provoked. Steinbeck was clearly a genius, and he paints his characters in the most dramatic of colours. He brings out so much of the despicable and the beautiful manifestations of human nature through them. And he is not afraid to approach the rough edges and inglorious realities of life. In fact, I’d say that he primarily dwells on them. But the reading is that much better for it. East of Eden is a broad retelling of the Cain and Abel story, but the Biblical author left out the raw emotion of unrequited yearning, of shame and of awful despair which mark Steinbeck’s version. Yet despite the many human tragedies which slowly unfold as we read, the ending gives us a sort of peace and a sort of inspiring hope.

“…demented by the glory and solitude of God.”

I’ve once again found myself astounded by a Louis de Bernières novel. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin might have been even better than Birds Without Wings. De Bernières has this wonderfully aggravating knack of pulling me into another world, then twisting, tearing, pushing my emotions in every direction, and finally dumping back into the banality of my own existence, but much better off for the experience. Both novels present an unblinking gaze into some of the horrors of war, and into the despairingly evil nature in men, and into the absurdities that form history, but also into the sublime intricacies of human relationships; and all of this peppered throughout with delicious little bits of humour and incisive religious and political commentary. In short, it is very much worthwhile and I happily recommend any book which can leave me so satisfied and so distraught all at the same time.

Worst Vacation Ever - The green hills and valleys of Uganda beguiled me into a sense of tranquility not fit for the purpose of my visit here: a dentist appointment. Ten thousand curses upon all wisdom teeth. The dentist’s evil instruments wreaked their unholy havoc upon my maladjusted third molars; an experience from which I’m still reeling. My God I could go for a smoke, and something to cure me of my unkind sobriety.

Back in Sudan - Morning is an uninvited guest; a stubborn and insufferable mule. I face it grudgingly, grasping a plastic cup full of steaming tea, black and bitter, which rightly matches my disposition. I’m still thinking the thoughts of last night -- thoughts inspired by a coffee-induced restlessness which spared me no reprieve or escape into fancy. Thoughts… of 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty; of women walking 3 miles to a stream for water which will probably make their children sick; of a little girl with a skinned knee, and the flies swarming around it; of an unconscious man by the side of the road, and the crimson rivulet of blood flowing from his ear; of how he died two days ago. I think of how I still refuse to consider my own mortality. Instead, I diverge into literature.

“No! a man is better at home. Here, at all events, you can lay the blame on others, thus justifying yourself in your own eyes. I may perhaps undertake an expedition to the North Pole, because drink, which used to be my only solace, has at last sickened me.” – Svidrigailoff to Raskolnikoff in Crime and Punishment