So, uhm, hey there Internet. It's been a while.
...
Y'know, I was going to do another "oops, I dun buggered up, but I'm back!" post here, but frankly they get repetitive. Let's just get right into things again.
New Job
Huzzah! I finally picked up work that isn't pissing about at wal-mart. It's just regular uniformed security work, but it's not without benefits. Not the least of which is that I'm typing this up while on the job. Does this mean I'm slacking? Does this mean poor lil' Andrew is liable to get fired? No, no, no. I'm doing what they fancily refer to as 'access control', the glorious job of watching an entrance of a building incase it decides to spontaneously combust or get up and leave. Since such occurrences are notably rare the management has taken the remarkably understanding position of allowing the security staff to find ways to quietly entertain themselves over the long shifts - anything to keep awake, actually.
What does this mean? Well, aside from the very obvious oodles of spare time I have to write blogs cropping back up, I also get to catch up on my reading, watching movies, and contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Hell, if I thought I had a dam thing worth saying I'd probably try to sneak the equipment in here to begin recording. Really, the only problem is a regrettable lack of Internet access, a problem that's apparently rare if not almost unique to my current posting. Here's hoping a future post will see that issue go away.
King Rat
I've had a corner of my room dedicated to a slowly growing pile of books for the last several months. Most of these belong to Josh, who'll occasionally add a new one to the pile and politely ask me if I actually ever intend to read them. Of course I say yes; I'm a voracious reader, I can consume a four hundred page book in a day if the mood stikes me, and any day now - you'll see! And then I promptly forget about them. And then the pile grows. I recently started storing them in a cabinet, partly because it was getting impossible to find desk space, partly because of the imagined guilty looks I could feel the books themselves giving me.
Finally, at long last, the new job. Twelve hour long shifts and a dead quite building to do them in. I went back to my shamefully neglected reading mountain and carefully sifted through the piles. I returned with King Rat, as perhaps some small OCD part of my mind noted that it was amongst the first given to me, and took solace in my much belated reading schedule picking right back up where it left off.
At first I will award it will the dubious merit of being one of those books you don't read on an empty stomach. While it's usually a rare and beautiful thing to find an author that will let you connect with the characters in such a way that you share in their pain and joy on a very personal level it becomes a touch depressing when you realize just how much more of the former there's going to be. The sense of longing conveyed is so exceptional to the point of being difficult to read. The defenses each character sets up in his mind to deal with the horrible situation is played out with such care that it never overwhelms the reader, but leaves them in a resigned state - grudgingly dedicated to continue until a happier time. A state of mind that reflects most of the cast perfectly.
It's these little pre-planned themes that the good authors set up that I just love. The meta-purpose of the book, to reduce the reader to a state that'll empathize with the characters in such an intimate manner is, in my experience, one of the best ways to write.
An interesting counter-point to King Rat is A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. At a cursory glance they share a number of obvious similarities. Both are based in the mid 20th century in labour camps run by oppressive regimes that don't care much for the prisoners inside. They tell stories of how the inhabitants just survived, with no real focus on heroism or justice, instead opting to create a more realistic story that readers will fall into, relating to the characters who act and behave much like they would themselves. They both create an atmosphere of dull resignation that permeates everything, creating an acute sense that the characters were broken long before the reader ever got there.
Most times when we open a book and meet our protagonists we go on a journey with them, and we get to see them develop into new people. In King Rat this has already happened for most of the characters involved. They've been broken down and won't see any real changes throughout the course of the book, the sole real exception to this is Peter Marlowe, through whose eye's we begin the understand the camp. Of course, as a character Peter is barely even important, he has an arc but he isn't what draws you back to the book, he's essentially just a tool for showing the reader everyone else. His normality is almost comical in the beginning, but he seems very human, more human than anyone else in the camp, and it's through him that the reader is drawn into everything else.
They say Ivan Denisovich is a great insight into the minds of the Russian people at the time of it's writing, both how they saw themselves anyhow they actually were. King Rat mirrors this for western culture, if maybe a more specific element of it. All told a very interesting read, tempting me to pick up the rest of the Asian Saga. Not right now - not while the book mountain looms unhappily back home, but soon. It definitely warrants a place on the grand reading list.
