Candide? Can-do-it already.

After a grueling second semester at Chicago's Roosevelt University, I was ready to enjoy a laundry list of books I had been compiling since I had started my Junior year. Although I had read a number of books over Christmas break (gasp! I mean Winter Break!), I knew which ones I was ready to tackle and which ones I would wait until next winter to read.

First on my list was Scott Blackwood's We Agreed to Meet Just Here. Blackwood heads up the MFA program at Roosevelt and I've met him a few times. I liked his book--though I can't really tell you why, nor can I really tell you what it is about. It mixes some actual events with Jonestown with mythology and stream of consciousness in an interesting way. I will definitely have to read it once more before school starts again.

Next on the list was Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Bottom line--really drawn out sentences, great imagery, all within the classification of modern writing. I do prefer Woolf's criticism--probably because she makes reference of James Joyce and let's face it--anytime Joyce is mentioned, I have to swoon. And yet, swooning at Woolf's affection of Joyce's work is rather odd in itself.

Then my mother swooped down and said, "Why don't you read Candide?" I looked at her with disapproving eyes. I've just finished reading T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland...and you want me to take a step backward and read Voltaire? "I can-did already," I said, quite sarcastically. And when I couldn't tell her anything I had read about it except for that it was anti-Christian, she gave me her copy and sent me on my way.
When I cracked Candide, I found it to be a very quick and easy read and basically anyone who pissed Voltaire off in his life, be it personal or professional, got a shout out in the book---and not a very positive one at that. So basically, if you pissed Mr. Voltaire off, you got killed or portrayed very stupidly in his work. Which leaves me to only one conclusion, Voltaire was a bitch. And our hero, Candide? What an idiot he turned out to be.
When I finished the story, I went back to my mother to talk about it--her plan all along, really. She does this with her own mother; my mom will watch a third rate soap opera (I won't mention the name but it rhymes with One Life To Live) just so she can have something to talk to my grandmother about. God knows they can't talk about politics because we voted for Obama and not Sarah Palin.** So it this what has become of our relationship? She wanted to talk--or she just wanted someone to converse with on Candide?
I called her on the phone. "Hey Mom," I started," I finished Candide."
"Oh, and what did you think?" she asked. "Eh--Candide was a dope." She laughed. Then I asked her some questions about some of the locations of the story--to which she replied, "Oh I don't know Chris, it's been about twelve years since I've read it." My mouth dropped.
"I thought you wanted me to read it to talk about it?" I asked. "Well, yes," she said, "but didn't you like how they made fun of the Catholic church?" There goes her chance at being canonized.

I since have moved onto Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which I am quite enjoying but also nearly finished. I'll give a proper (proper? really?) review of it later. Perhaps around the time I figure out what I'll be reading next.

**I realize that Sarah Palin was the VP candidate, not the Presidential one. But my Grandmother didn't like McCain--she loved Palin. Hence the Obama V. Palin comment. Oh, by the way, in case you didn't already guess, Obama would still win against Palin.