Updike, Ashkenazy.

John Updike is from Mars, Vladimir Ashkenazy is from Ve... no, not really. They are both from this world, although Mr. U is from middle-class white America (which, it seems from his novels, a separate world of its own) and Mr. A is from Soviet Russia (although, to be fair, he is also a half-Jew and his surname is Jewish).

What do those two people share to warrant writing about them in the same entry, other than having born in the same decade (1930's), and looking like a pair of identical gray scale twins with characteristic silver white hair?



Well, not much, it seems. And probably not much really, too. But in my mind, those two greatly accomplished artists of nearly completely unrelated fields of art are inexplicably linked. Let me explain:

Ashkenazy is a pianist. I don't know the first thing about playing a piano or listening to one, but through my few years of casually listening to classical music, it seems Mr A has a rather distinct style. To put into words, he plays every note with extreme clarity and precision, it is overwhelming. For the first two bars or so of his performance, I'm in awe. His piano, it seems, has transformed from a crude approximation into the very Platonic model of the perfect sound generating machine. Unlike, say, Artur Rubenstein, who doesn't give a flying fuck about what the notes are and gets them wrong about half the time anyway.

Updike is a novelist. I don't know the first thing about writing a novel or reading one, but through my few years of casually reading to novels, it seems Mr U has a rather distinct style. To put into words, he writes every word and sentence with extraordinary beauty, it is overwhelming. For the first two pages of his novel, I'm in awe. The scene he's describing, it seems, has transformed from a dark, sordid, poor quarters of the normal little people into a scene of great beauty and grandeur. Unlike, say, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who has never sent anyone running to a dictionary.

After the first shock of beauty, and when readers and listeners alike have regained their consciousness, and have read and listened and enjoyed and then endured more than half of their respective performances, readers and listeners (reasteners?) are left to wonder: What is this guy trying to say? and if one is brave enough to stay to the end the answer comes, sometimes like a dove, sometimes like a drill against the skull - Nothing.

Mr U and Mr A alike, it seems, have spent a great deal of time and effort mastering their arts (and no doubt, they are great masters) and yet, their performances ring hollow. Under the skin of extraordinary prettiness, there is nothing.

Final words - Ashkenazy's music is far more endurable than Updike's to me personally, if only because I think literature should have a message, where music can server very well in an elevator.

Disgrace

All of the characters in the story Disgrace, are disgraced. Sometimes through extraordinary circumstances, sometimes as the result of an everyday action, sometimes just because they are human.

This story kept me thinking for a while. What did the author mean? What are the allegories? Symbolisms? Messages? What did he want to say? At first I thought it was the age-old mantra: No fate is worse than death, disgrace is a part of life, live through because life still beautiful. Nice and calming and idyllic, although the story itself is not.

But now I think again about it, I see something more in it. Every character in the story is disgraced - no, every human character is disgraced. Without their disgrace, the characters would be nothing. Ah, then, this is it: Disgrace is a unique and necessary human condition.

Because disgrace can be anything. It can be an old man trying to seduce a young girl. It can be the same old man forcing his way on the girl, it can be the girl who did not resist. It can be a rape, it can be the father of the raped girl who could not protect her. It can be having an affair, it could be physical disfigurement. It can be a mother of two who has a side-job as a high class prostitute.

Disgrace, it seems, is everywhere. All parties of an act have their shame, their disgrace, and there is no escaping from this as long as one is still human.


To be human is to live with disgrace, much like the fate of so many dogs in the story was to be hugged by a person who gives them a full and warm attention, calmed, then injected. Their fate was to be among so many of them. There is nothing that they can do, or the person who loves them the most. This is the inescapable fate.

Alternatives are also suggested in the book, however. Be an animal, or live like an animal. The racist point of view is bitter, not because it is racist and I'm a racistist (which in my humble opinion, almost but slightly less as bad), but because my heart goes to my South African friends.

Information on the book:
Author: J. M. Coetzee, a Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, a Man-Booker prize winner for Life & Times of Michael K.

Title: Disgrace
First published in 1999, written originally in English.

Greetings

This is going to be a joint blog of Sheep and me. We would like to keep it mostly to literature and films, although other forms of communication might enter here and there (Photography, music, and so on). The boundaries are there only to keep the intimately personal stuff out of this, what is proposed to be my first public blog, or publishing of any kind.

Sheep, my closest friend, has been watching movies since quite a while ago. When he started I assumed that it was going to be one of his many obsessions that lasts for two years and then fizzles, but this time it's proving its longevity. Around the same time, I started reading novels, mostly in English but sometimes in Korean. Sheep also reads, and sometimes I also watch movies.

We would like to post our 'thoughts', roughly once a week each or so. I can only call them thoughts, since they are not going to be reviews, previews or any other forms of criticism or journalism. If anything, I wish them to be a creation on their own rights.

My first post is going to be on J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace.