Completed
I've finished The Memory Police More and more things disappear on the island where none of the characters have names. No wait...one character has a name, the dog is named "Don." My name. The old man is just the old man. R is R. The narrator is ??? But the dog is "Don." Go figure.
The memory police are always in the background, only briefly directly involved in the action of the novel. As things disappear, they make sure that anyone who remembers the disappeared things is removed. Those who remember must go into hiding, or fake not remembering, which becomes pretty difficult once body parts start disappearing. When things "disappear," they don't actually vanish by themselves, just the memories of them. The islands residents are responsible to destroy or dispose of the items themselves. Here the narrator is faced with objects that had been save and hidden
The objects in my palm seemed to cower there, absolutely still, like little animals in hibernation, sending me no signal at all
Most of the population forgets, and the memory police root out the few who do not. It's oppressive and depressive. Much as the narrator struggles, she does not remember. And the novel ends like TS Eliot's world: not with a bang but a whimper. And yet, with a certain triumph as well.
Complex yet minimalist. Wierd yet natural. This is a book that will stay with you for a bit. One you will remember. At least until the memory police come for you.
4/5 stars
Continuing Reading
Gandhi is a bit of a slog. Not that it's uninteresting, it's just so foreign. Not just the culture or the settings, but Gandhi was an extraordinary man who did not think as other men of the time thought or as we think today. If I was reading this for entertainment, I'd have put it down by now. But I'm reading it to try to understand a little about an extraordinary and influential man, and it is good for that.
Homo Deus is still checked out, but hasn't been looked at because...
Started
I started reading Putting it together by James Lapine. This is the story of how Lapine and Sondheim created Sunday in the Park with George and is endlessly fascinating. Lapine's narrative sections serve mainly as glue to hold the bits of interviews together. He has brought in as many of the people involved in the project as he can. They talk of their memories, feelings of the time. Often their memories vary one from another and how, say, Mandy, felt at the time was a complete suprise to James.
And it is filled with wonderful little anecdotes. Here Sondheim is relating working with Jerome Robbins on West Side Story and how many artists don't like being watched while creating:
"Get out." He didn't say it that way, but it was the look on his face - and I couldn't understand why. That was why. He was making. You don't want to be making something in front of somebody else.
I have just finished the off-Broadway workshopping of the show and they are heading to Broadway. I'm only a quarter through the book, but even if the rest of it turns out to be a sales pitch for a timeshare, I'll give it 5 of 5 stars. It's that good.
In conclusion
The Lapine book is great and I'll probably rip through it pretty quickly. Gandhi continues to be fasinating but slow. I'll probably pick up a work of fiction to alternate with the non-fiction - I have checked out A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, but but have yet to open it up. I usually have works of NF and F to alternate between, but Putting It Together has such a strong narrative, it still provides some balance.