Nelson Book List

Joseph O'Neill (1964-), Netherland (2008)
Jhumpa Lahiri (1967-), Unaccustomed Earth (2008)
Aravind Adiga (1974-), The White Tiger (2008)
Doris Lessing (1919-), The Cleft (2007)
Ian McEwen (1948-), On Chisel Beach (2007)
Guo Xiaolu (1973-), A Concise C-E Dictionary for Lovers (2007)
Michael Thomas, Man Gone Down (2007)
Anne Enright (1962-), The Gathering (2007)
Per Petterson (1952), Out Stealing Horses (2007)
Philip Roth (1933-), Everyman (2007)
Diane Setterfield (1964-), The Thirteenth Tale (2006)
Claire Messud (1966-), The Emperor’s Children (2006)

Paul Auster (1947), The Brooklyn Follies (2005)
Kim Edwards (1958-), The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (2005)
Roberto Bolano (1953-2003), 2666 (2004)
Alex Garland (1970-), The Coma (2004)
Khaled Hosseini (1965-), The Kite Runner (2003)
Alice Sebold (1963-), The Lovely Bones (2002)
Jeffery Eugenides (1960-), Middlesex (2002)
Haruki Murakami (1949-), Kafka on the Shore(2002)
Ian McEwen (1948-), Atonement (2001)

Peter Carey (1943-), True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)
Margaret Atwood (1939-), The Blind Assassin (2000)
Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), Parable of the Talents (1998)
Arundhati Roy (1961-), God of Small Things (1997)
Chu Tien-Wen (1956), Notes of a Desolate Young Man (1994)
--- 朱天文, 荒人手記
Alain de Botton (1969-), Essays in Love (1993)
Jeanette Winterson (1959-), Written on the Body (1992)
Orhan Pamuk (1952-), The White Castle (1985/90)
Paulo Coelho (1947-), The Alchemist (1988)
Toni Morrison (1931-), Beloved (1987)
Cormac McCarthy (1933-), Blood Meridian (1985)
Sandra Cisneros (1954-), The House on Mango Street (1984)
Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), The Lover (1984)
Gabriel G. Marquez (1927- ), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1982)
Milan Kundera (1929-), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1982)
Salmon Rushdie (1947), Midnight’s Children (1981)
Marilynne Robinson (1943-), Housekeeping (1980)
J. M. Coetzee (1940-), Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)
Maxine Hong Kingston (1940-) The Woman Warrior (1976)
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), Slaughter House Five (1969)
Jean Rhys (1890-1979), Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Chinua Achebe (1930-), Things Fall Apart (1958)
James Baldwin (1924-1987), Giovanni’s Room (1956)
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Lolita (1955)
J. D. Salinger (1919-), The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Truman Capote (1924-1984), Summer Crossing (aprox. 1949/50)
Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)
George Orwell (1903-1950), Animal Farm (1945)
Ann Frank (1929-1945), Ann Frank: Diary of a Young Girl (1945)
Zora N. Hurston(1891-1960),Their Eyes Were Watching God (-37)
Andre Breton (1896- 1966), Nadja (1928)
D. H. Laurence (1885-1930), Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), Orlando (1928)
Virginia Woolf, To the Light House (1927)
Yu Da-Fu (1896-1945), Chenlun (Sinking) (1921)
--- 郁達夫, 沉淪
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), Herland (1915)
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), Of Human Bondage (1915)
D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1913)

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Jude the Obscure (1895)
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)
Mark Twain (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huck Finn (1884)
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), Jane Eyre (1847)
Emily Brontë (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights (1847)
Mary Shelly (1797-1851), Frankenstein (1818)

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse is one of Virginia Woolf’s canonical works that helps shape the modernist tradition. In constructing this work, Woolf breaks away from traditional narration and takes on the voice of a modified third person narrator. The multiple perspectives allow the readers to delve into each character’s consciousness with more precision; they also offer a clearer and more in-depth picture of the relationship between characters as it examines beyond spoken words. Under a prevailing elegiac atmosphere, To the Lighthouse is a carefully designed tale that closely studies its characters as they interact and confront with each other; meanwhile, it also provides its own interpretation on human relations, memory and life.

Woolf constructs a foundational framework for the novel in the first section “The Window”, in which characters are introduced with tiny incidents in one summer day through free indirect discourse. As the story unfolds, each character is portrayed through a synthesis of angles and perspectives. We reach to certain knowledge about the characters through others’ understanding and opinions of them. In oppose to the traditional narration, in which characters are built with a fixed viewpoint, here they are shown through fragments of actions, self-reflections and comments from all other characters. Free from any biased, pre-ordained judgments, Woolf devises a more objective story-telling that distinguishes itself from nineteenth century writers.

In the highly experimental second part “Time Passes”, Woolf describes the passing of ten years through layers of scenes with sentimental and descriptive prose. As time slowly goes by, the shawl that Mrs. Ramsay wears in the previous section “loosen[s]”(148). The shawl, a symbolic representation of things in general, parallels with the crumbling down of things, as we are told about the death of several characters. Without direct reference to the actual incidents, Woolf successfully accounts for the passing time through her careful sketch on nature forces and the decaying physical objects, noticeably the shawl and the house. At the end of this section, the house, as if expectant of the coming final section, is finally cleaned and freshens up when the Ramseys’ decide to come back after ten years.

“The Lighthouse” concludes the novel through the realization of the long-anticipating voyage to the lighthouse; meanwhile, it forms a dialectic relationship with “The Window”. After one decade, the characters gather again on the island, and each recalls with reminiscence the tiny incidents that take place on that particular summer day. Memory, then, becomes the foundation to their thinking and behavior and is constructed through the fragmental image of past incidents, and these fragments are the things that we understand and remember others by. As when, in the third section, Lily Briscoe’s relationship with Mrs. Ramsay and Charles Tansley is reduced to one beach scene, each character finds in that summer things that they remember the past with. The past, in the sense of how Woolf recalls it, is no longer linear but fragmental. We realize, therefore, that the incidents Woolf captures are in fact larger than daily life, and they reminds us of the significance in the seemingly trivial things.

In a tale that revolves around characters as such, one detects, besides their relations, how characters counter, respond, echo with, or is similar with each other. As the title suggests, one greater theme in the novel is the desire to reach or to arrive at something. Besides the false promise in the opening, many characters share the eagerness to accomplish something. For Mr. Ramsay, it is first to arrive at the letter R; Mrs. Ramsay hopes to finish the knitting by the end of that summer day. For Charles Tansley, it is his dissertation, and all the while for Lily Briscoe, to arrive at her own vision. Some of the characters’ accomplishments, together with the fact that Lily finally reaches her own vision, turn this otherwise bleak novel towards a little light in the end.

Characters in To the Lighthouse are presented with much ambivalence, but the overall atmosphere has a tendency towards an elegiac tone. From the like/dislike, love/hate relations between characters, to the sorrowful tone and yet lighter ending, everything is shown with more than one interpretations. However, despite the ending, in spite of the reconciliation, the pessimistic undertone that starts with Mrs. Ramsay’s comment on her children that “[n]ever will they be happy again” (69) lingers, so when Mr. Ramsay mentions the line“[w]e perish, each alone” (189), even Lily’s final epiphany fails to make any difference in the end.

Yu Da-Fu, Chenlun (Sinking) /郁達夫, 沉淪

Yu Da-Fu, Chenlun (Sinking) /郁達夫, 沉淪

Recognized as one of the most important modern literary voices in the Chinese May Fourth Movement, Yu Da-Fu is known for his daring treatment of sexual desires among educational youths. His writing style shares a slightly likeness with the I-novel* found in Japanese literature. One of the most famous works from this iconic novelist is Chenlun (Sinking), in which he tells the story of a Chinese young man’s life as a foreign student in Japan. Rich, luscious but all the while brooding, Chenlun is a genuine portrayal of a troubled young man whose anxiety for sex and love we all share commonly, and yet, the patriotic spirit that embodies the protagonist, however the readers try to identify, remains so long lost to our generation that it is only unlikely to recall.

The work remotely recalls our first encounter with the young artist in The Sorrow of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werther) by Goethe, whose melancholic protagonist arouses sympathy from readers over generations. While Werther suffers for his unrequited love, the sentimentality in Yu’s protagonist derives more from the absence of love and the unfulfilled sexual desire. Having all the desire and feelings in the world, but with none to share with, the newly matured young man suffers tremendously an alienation that is hard to endure. Therefore, as he bestows himself upon the healing power of nature and practices the life of romanticists, nature then becomes his only escapade.

The final complaint from the protagonist, rather than an accusation towards the country, is instead a bitter exclamation to call for a more powerful country. For his suffering is not merely the result of his self-disappointment, but also the incompetence in China’s diplomacy in worldly affairs. For modern readers, Yu reminds a time when individual and the country are inseparable; he brings to us the nostalgic feeling towards the time when patriotism is still deeply rooted within every individual. We could not help but wonder since when it has gone from us, and for how long without our awareness.

Chenlun, having much involvement with natural surroundings, is a romantic tale of an upright young man. Yu accurately captures the hollowness and meaninglessness of a lone man’s life; his representation of human desires raw and meanwhile so fundamentally truthful. As one of the most prestigious modernist writers in the early twentieth century, Yu sets for Chinese Literature an example of a character courageous enough to face his true self, a voice that is daring enough to speak out. Stylish but without embellishment, Yu Da-Fu excellently captures in his work the last innocence remained in a maturing individual, an account over a period that has already, regrettably, flown past us without leaving any trace behind.

*I-novel: A genre sprang from Japanese literature in the early twentieth century. It includes works that features realistic and honest self-confession from the protagonist, through whom experiences are represented truthfully.