Day by Elie Wiesel (3 stars)

 

Another very meditative short novel to complete the trilogy. This one ponders the question:

Having survived the cruelest of wars, how does one go on in a hostile or indifferent world?

 When you have lost everything except memory, how can you count on the future or become attached to another person? Wiesel has written that God died in the camps for him, and it shows in the self-reflection here.

Once I asked my teacher, Kalman the cabalist, the following question: For what purpose did God create man? I understand that man needs God. But what need of man has God?

Suffering brings out the lowest, the most cowardly in man. There is a phase of suffering you reach beyond which you become a brute: beyond it you sell your soul—and worse, the souls of your friends—for a piece of bread, for some warmth, for a moment of oblivion, of sleep. Saints are those who die before the end of the story. The others, those who live out their destiny, no longer dare look at themselves in the mirror, afraid they may see their inner image: a monster laughing at unhappy women and at saints who are dead…

The problem is not: to be or not to be. But rather: to be and not to be. What it comes down to is that man lives while dying, that he represents death to the living, and that’s where tragedy begins.

Our stay there planted time bombs within us. From time to time one of them explodes. And then we are nothing but suffering, shame, and guilt. We feel ashamed and guilty to be alive, to eat as much bread as we want, to wear good, warm socks in the winter. One of these bombs, Kathleen, will undoubtedly bring about madness. It’s inevitable. Anyone who has been there has brought back some of humanity’s madness. One day or another, it will come to the surface.

3 stars

Dawn by Elie Wiesel (3 stars)

When I bought Night, I bought it as a trilogy with two other books: Dawn and Day. I assumed it was a single account of the holocaust in three parts, the books are all very short. It turns out that each book is very different and only Night is directly about the camps.

This one is a thought experiment from Wiesel about an alternative path his life could have taken after the war and the liberation of his concentration camp. In his own words:

Suppose the American army, instead of sending me to France, had handed me a visa to the Holy Land—would I have had the courage to join one of the movements that fought for the right of the Jewish people to form an independent state in their ancestral homeland? And if so, could I have gone all the way in my commitment and killed a man, a stranger?

and not just after the camps, but what would he have done if he'd spent two or four years in the camps instead of one? Would he have become a kapo and what would he have done if he was required to strike a friend?

The novel is deeply introspective:

A man hates his enemy because he hates his own hate. He says to himself: This fellow, my enemy, has made me capable of hate. I hate him not because he’s my enemy, not because he hates me, but because he arouses me to hate.

...Because my people have never known how to hate. Their tragedy, throughout the centuries, has stemmed from their inability to hate those who have humiliated and from time to time exterminated them. Now our only chance lies in hating you, in learning the necessity and the art of hate. 

 3 stars

Night by Elie Wiesel (unrated)

This showed up on some Goodreads best books of all time list, so I figured I'd tick it off. I later learned that Wiesel won the Nobel peace prize and has been a guest on Oprah, and this book was part of her book club.

I have no idea how to rate this book, and doing a literary critique just feels wrong, so I'm leaving it unrated. If you're looking for a first-person non-fiction account of the horror of the Holocaust, this is your book. It's a raw account of survival from a child in just the most horrendous environment. 

This is not the sort of book you enjoy, but it's a very important book for educating future generations. I've visited Auschwitz/Birkenau in the winter, so I was able to vividly picture the brutal concentration camps in winter, it's something I'll remember forever.

The Stranger by Albert Camus (3.5 stars)

One of the most unusual books I've read. It's certainly very clever, but I didn't enjoy reading it a whole lot. I've also left it too long to give it a proper review :(

3.5 stars.

Double Star by Robert A Heinlein (3 stars)

Winner of the 1956 Hugo. It feels like an extended short story inspired by Heinlein's time hanging out with actors via his wife's work. It's partly homage to the skill of actors, and partly a thought experiment about what makes a person. 

If you can become a character, replicating their mannerisms, opinions and outlook on life so completely as to fool others at what point do you become that character? What if you did that daily for months or years? Where does the character stop and how do you keep yourself separate?

The story and concept isn't bad, but the plot twists and outcome are obvious.

3 stars.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (4 stars)

A very interesting novel first published in 1962. There's definitely some significant racism and sexism in here that wouldn't be tolerated today. The central theme of the novel is institutional power, in this case in the form of a nurse's power over her patients inside a mental hospital, but it's meant as a reflection on the wider concept. 

We see McMurphy's fierce individualism, independence, and belief in himself under attack and eroded over time in an effort to make him fit in to continue the "efficient" operation of the hospital. It's a thought provoking example of how power wielded without compassion can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

Imagine applying McMurphy's feelings of being trapped under a weight of meaningless rules, deprivations and indignities to other power relationships: government/citizen, white/black, employer/employee.

4 stars. 

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (4 stars)

A tough story to read. Tara's success through so much adversity is remarkable. There are so many times where she could, or should, have died even just from physical injuries, let alone mental injuries. Her level of academic success, and the amazing quality of her writing and speaking (I watched an interview) is really astonishing given her background and what it took for her to get there. 

I'm not sure it's inspiring, more horrifying, knowing that there are many more like her that don't make it out of poverty and abuse to a comfortable life, let alone international success.

Another thing that suck with me is just how destructive conspiracy theories can be when combined with mental illness. Her Dad's paranoia and radicalization were stoked by the events with the Weavers on Ruby Ridge, and very nearly destroyed the entire family.

4 stars.