The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana III -- chapter 2: I AM A BURNING LOG

Cornell's copy of the "First Folio"

Regardless of the edition you have of the book, you should have something pop-culturish to look at on its cover. This ties into the title of the book, which we'll go into a little deeper a little later.  However, I can't let a title like this of a book like this go without at least some minor examination.  "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" is an episode title of an old, American adventure comic called, Tim Tyler's Luck, which was translated into Italian.  With this, as well as any flipping-through you might have done (and which, in this rare case, I encourage), I'd like to preface a secondary "big question" for this book: what does pop culture have to do with the formation of our memory--our memory as it applies to our definition of self, inasmuch as Yambo has lost his (memory/self)?  As it turns out, and if I remember rightly, there's a lot more pop culture affecting this highly-learned man's personal history than stuff so highbrow as Shakespeare's First Folio.

1. Yambo's discourse about jumping reminds me of Life of Pi: (approximately) You run as far as the legs of reason will carry you and then leap.
2. I wonder (insubstantially; inconsequentially): If we know our own smells and the smell of our home and car so well that we don't even notice them, would Yambo "notice" his own smell, or that of home, car, wife, kids, etcetera?
3. Considering the other novels mentioned (The Betrothed, Orlando Furioso, and Le Pere Goriot), what do supposed is Eco's position on Catcher in the Rye?  (Having read a lot of Eco's literary criticism and philosophy, Rye doesn't seem like typical reading for study by Eco.  Salinger is a different kind of brilliant (though, in my opinion, certainly no less, and, well, perhaps even greater) than Proust and Joyce, whom he definitely admires and even loves.
4. The languages from which Yambo quotes a few verses are also Eco's second languages: German, French, and English.
5. Interesting that Yambo documented fog even before the amnesia.  Any connection, or just coincidence (as author, certainly Eco did it intentionally, but is there anything to this within the confines of the novel)?  Regardless, fog, if I remember correctly, will be a lasting motif and even theme of the book.  How might one be born into a fog?
6. Yambo's life was fractious before the amnesia.  Does this lower the significance of the amnesia, or mean that anyone who's life is split like Yambo's undergoes his own kind of amnesia?  Or something else?
7. As alluded to earlier, Eco doesn't do anything by accident.  What of the mention of the Garden of Eden (despite the shtick of the "tree of good and evil")?
8. Compare the predictions by the tolling clock to the running start before the leap.
9. ....like Tom Sawyer ... or Luke Skywalker!
10. Interesting the automatic response (and the Eco thought of it!) of Yambo's old and best friend, who, in the face of him with whom he's experienced nearly everything and with whom the past doesn't need to be discussed, as it's always been present between them, he can't help--and you get the impression the he can't help finally--reliving all those old events.
11. Such dividing lines are always marked with turmoil--or tumult.  What we were before the event is very different from the person after the event, though, as far as I've observed and experienced, the change after the fault is usually linked directly to the tumultuous event itself, like changing religions, giving up drugs/alcohol, vowing an honest life.  In this case, Yambo, of course, is entirely innocent of the cause of the divide.  Will he change? Certainly he's different now, but will he remain so--changed, for better or worse--once his self has been returned to him or reclaimed?  For instance, he's discovering that he was quite a playboy.  Does he regret it?  Will it cause change?  (There more's substance for discussing this in the next chapter.)
12. Finally, keep your eyes open for treasure.  For bibliophiles like us (and I'm assuming, I doubt foolishly or presumptuously, that anyone who actually reads this blog must consider themselves, to one advanced degree or another, bibliophilic), Yambo deals daily in treasure; it's his job.  We will come across the "First Folio" soon (-ish?), as well as other treasures, which will offer substance for discussion.

Book Review #2: MOCKINGJAY

Have you ever heard someone say that they just finished reading a book--a book you've also read and happened to have enjoyed--and complained about what a disappointment it was, and you wonder, "Was he even reading the same book?"  Well, keep that in mind.  I'm coming back to it.

I hopped on the Hunger Games bandwagon over the summer, when Wal-Mart finally picked up the first book, which I could buy on the cheap.  Until then, my wife and I had our names on the waiting list at the local library.  (We're still not halfway through that list!)  We each read the first.  We each loved it.  It was exciting and almost new to read a writer who, first, didn't pull any punches (and if you haven't read these, really, she "keeps it real") and, two, kept it direct and simple.  This is a big deal for a someone like me who admittedly and happily loves prolixity--if it's done well, at least.  As it turns out (and such is more than certainly the case with McCarthy's The Road, by the way) that if not terse, then laconic, is just as good.  This is especially the case here, when it would be entirely out of character for the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, to wax poetic. 

The second book made it to the mega-store as well, and we read it with similar abandon.  It too was great and fun and shocking and does what any good second-in-a-trilogy should do: it propels on from the first, and prepares with excellent cliffhanger for the third; and it can almost stand alone.

The third book, Mockingjay, came along.  We'd awaited it eagerly.  But we'd also just lost our job.  We couldn't get it.  And we couldn't get it.  Wal-Mart got it, and still we couldn't get it.  (Twice, I almost forewent milk and gas to get it, but I didn't.)  My sister-in-law got it.  Borrowed it from a friend.  It's on second-hand loan to us, and I finished it last night.

As it's been quite some time since it's come out (well, a couple months, I guess), I've heard a lot of reactions to the close of the story.  Mostly I've just heard, "What a disappointment!"  As I plugged along the first half of the book, I began to agree!  It was a little slow; not really Collins' style.  But that's it!  There was a lot of exposition that needed to happen--yes, NEEDED.  I had faith, though, in Collins, and stuck with it.  (I would have anyway; I couldn't wait to find out what the end was actually going to be!  How would the rebels win; whom would Katniss choose; would one of the selection even return to sanity; and what about the long-distant duel of the psycho presidents?)  So I finished, and I wondered, "What book did all those other people read, because it couldn't have been this one!  That ending was AMAZING!"

An inspiration, in fact, such that again I jealously thought, "Crap, I want to create something beautiful and brilliant!"  (Maybe someday.)

I think the problem people have with reading something like this is their inability to separate what they want to happen with what should, or simply DOES, happen.  It's not about what you want!  I'm guessing that most of them are sad/mad that quite a few favorite characters simply don't make it.  But isn't that how war is?  I'm sorry, but put a group of people on the front line of a war and chances are that most of them, if not all, are going to kick the bucket.  Yet there's courage and heroism and tragedy and revenge and anger and relief and, in the end, justice and recovery.  The good guys win.  (That's not really a spoiler, because that's not really what it's about.)  But does Katniss win?  She's the protagonist.  This is her story.  It's not her sister's, or old friend's, or the districts', or the other recruits'; it's hers.  Period.  And how beautifully and perfectly--and, if this story were real, how likely--Collins draws it all together.

While I'm not comparing Collins in any other way to this particular book, in one aspect in particular she draws direct comparison to one of my favorites, Catcher in the Rye.  Salinger runs the entire book through with the string of a song.  That song is a metaphor for everything that happens in the story, and particularly to the central conflict of the protagonist.  So it happens here in Mockingjay.  Collins pens really a beautiful "song," which is much more poem than anything else, and does for her story what "Catcher in the Rye" (the song) does for Salinger's.  If for no other reason, read the book for "The Hanging Tree" and what it does for the book and its characters.

In the end, everyone, ignore the freaking nay-sayers.  Read this book.  It's wonderful, and will have (once I can buy my own copy, at least) a permanent spot on my book shelf, somewhere between Chabon and Dickens.